Cat Furniture!
Ok, this isn't exactly art, but I think it's pretty creative.
We own a house built in 1960. It has it's original hardwood floors (which are beautiful). BUT those hardwoods have shrunk a bit in their 50 years and now have some decent gaps between them (which are also beautiful). What is less beautiful is when our cats track litter all over and it gets stuck in those gaps. And then when those same cats mess with their water and we end up with litter cement in the cracks. That's actually kind of gross. And impossible to clean.
So Robert came up with a design for a "cat bench/litter home". The basic idea being that it's a bench with a hole in the top that holds our litter boxes. The kittehs jump in and out from the top, which ends up keeping most of the litter either inside the bench or on top. It's awesome.
I shelf papered the inside to make clean up easier (our big man cat can have, uh, difficulties with aiming). We also put it on casters so it's easier to move and it needed to be raised as it sits right over the AC vent for that room. We've made it very open so that the bench won't hold on to cat poop smells and discourage any of them from going in.
So far, it's been a hit! The litter is staying inside, everyone has been ok with using it. In fact they love to sit on the top (which has been enhanced with a thrift store bath mat) and watch the birds.
The other great bonus is that none of the dogs can sneak in there and eat "kitty treats!" Before we would have to shut the door to the cat room and make sure that the kitties got potty breaks, but not anymore!
Here's some other views. Fatty Duncan admiring the birds outside. They have their bath mat on one side and food and water dish on the other (the dogs also can't get those now either!).
The view during the feeding frenzy, uh I mean dinner time. Mr. Tub sez "Back off from my food bitches!" You can see one box peeking through the hole in the bench lid.
Robert is demonstrating poopy scooping time! We keep that long piece of scrap wood in there and use it to prop up the lid. You can also see the shelf paper. I didn't do the whole inside because I'm lazy and it's hard. I'd also like to paint the whole bench and seal the inside with a high gloss paint.
And on the "front" of the bench, we wound some sisal rope to make an extra scratcher for the cats to use.
So that's it! It was a fun project and it's really made a difference in keeping the kitty room clean.
For our GPP, I've been saving this fantastic photo of Boo, our girl cat.
This is our kitty:
This is our kitty on drugs!
~JML
Posted in: Animals, pet furniture, Random Things, Robert Hill on March 20, 2009 at at 12:29 PM 3 comments
