Building a kitty room

I am going to make my cats room more fun. I am going to build a cat tree/condo for my kitties. The thing will be HUGE, 6 feet tall and about 5 1/2 feet wide. There will be 2 tall posts wrapped in sisal with 2 smaller posts wrapped in carpet. The whole thing will be carpeted (except the sisal rope posts) and have 2 high perches. In all there will be 4 "rooms" and one of them will have 2 levels. I also plan on putting carpeted kitty shelves on the walls. I have already bought some plywood and strong brackets for the shelves. I have some left over carpet from when our house was built. Too bad I didn't have this idea when we were ripping the new carpet out to lay down hardwood, oh well. Any suggestions for stabilizing the hugemongous cat tree/condo would be great! I don't want it to be wobbly. No sense building it if they could get hurt or are scared of using it! I will post pictures as I go. I'm really excited about this project!!

Furrymom,that sounds great,I am sure the kitties will love it:cat:
It's difficult to say,without seeing it what you can use,if the base is big enough,it probably would not fall over.
We have a heavy metal base on one tree,but the other is just a wooden larger base and the tree does not fall.

Lucky kitties!! My cats would love a cat tree but don't really have room for it right now! Noella (kitten) uses the curtains for climbing! Little stinker, she likes sitting on the curtain rod...her Granma isn't too impressed though!!

Can you fasten the whole thing to a wall or do you not want to make that much of a commitment?

Sound like quite the project FurryMom. Make sure you take before, during and after pictures. :lightbulb:v

They're so much fun to look at! :thumbs up

Hi

We built one a couple of years ago. 7ft tall by almost 4ft I think. On the bottom we used a 3/4 inch piece of plywood with 4X4 metal post holders that are screwed into the plywood and also screwed into the 4 X 4 posts.

We also built a house on the bottom section to help with the tipping. I'll try to find the old thread if I can.

here is the link

http://www.pets.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=66497&highlight=cat+tree

If you are still looking for ideas this might help:
http://www.thecatshouse.com/catshouse/tour.htm
You can click on the room and then click on the orange cat in the corner to see more pictures, some from duirng construction might help. Not everyone likes neon colors, but the structures they built might give you some ideas, and its just fun to look at.

Thanks everyone! I will definitely take before and after pictures. I will probably paint their room this weekend and hang the carpet covered "shelves". I have 4 covered with carpet, but only 3 have brackets. The hardware store didn't have all that I needed at the time. I want to have 8 (maybe 10) around the room for their "looking down on the humans" pleasure.

The cat tree will hopefully look something like this http://www.playtimeworkshop.com/park_place.htm.
I made some modifications to my sketch and my neighbor has wood working tools that I'm sure he is itching to use. The best modification, in my opinion is, there will be two long posts from the smallest bottom "room" to the top perches. Nice and tall for long stretched out scratching. I also am only going to have 2 perches and not 3. I feel there are plenty of high perches with the "shelves" they will have all over the room. I'm really excited to get this built and their room complete. I am also planning on making a window perch. It's really funny to see 2 13lb cats and a 10 lb cat try to all fit on the window ledge. I also saw some carpeted wood, kind of like frames, hung on the walls for scratching. I may try to make some of those as well.

Wish me luck!! This is a very ambitious project for someone who has no wood working skills and injures herself every time she picks up a tool, or knife for that matter! Although I am pretty handy! The only problem will be finding studs in the places I need them!

Amanda

Tundra Queen, your cat tree is awesome and your kitties are adorable!!

furrymom -

I envy that you have a room to fix up for your cats! We don't have extra room so the cat tree is right here in the living room! But they and we don't mind sharing LOL

Good luck with your project.

Diane

Thanks Diane. A kitty room is a must!! We would have nowhere to put all those litter boxes, toys, beds, pillows, scratching posts, jungle gyms, houses and bowls. They really have a lot of stuff!! Their room is full and definitely a must since we got a puppy!! All cats but one hate the new addition. They don't know that he just wants to play. He's a dachshund, so they are the same size, if not bigger, than he is!