Building a Cat Tree With Built-in Scratching Areas?

jan

March 6, 20120 found this helpful

You can get design ideas by looking at the commercially made ones and draw a plan based on the good parts of those you like and make it the size you want. You can try going to carpet stores and ask for carpet samples if you don't mind different colors on it. Also buy sisal rope and use that on a few places for a different texture to dig his claws into.

The commercially made ones that we have use a heavy duty cardboard tube that is really made to pour concrete into to make posts. At the top of each round piece is a flat piece of particle or similar, and at the bottom also. Those pieces are square and larger than the post size. You do not want this part too skinny though, you want to be able to cut a hole in at least one of them for the cats to hide in. The larger one that we have there is a post that goes right through it and that is what the square pieces of particle board are screwed into, make sure it is screwed tightly.

The bottom of our larger one has a square bottom, then three 2x4's that support a piece of plywood which is then topped with the cardboard tubing which has a hole cut out for a bed, inside you would carpet the bottom or put in a nice soft pillow as a bed that you can take out and wash. One support is inside the hide out area for extra support.

My suggestion would be go and look at those in a store or look online for designs you like and go from there. Our cats were given a tall one for Christmas which is not even three months ago and they already have the post leading to the top bed which has a hole on one side for kitty to crawl up to the top which is a piece of plywood covered with carpet and has 3" sides on it, it is not enclosed like the other bed area, anyway that post is all in shreds already, of course we have twelve cats that use it. Buy liquid catnip and spray it down when you present it to the kitty or kitties and it will draw them to it.

Every time I spray mine it is like a magnet they all gravitate to it. I am not able to upload any pictures at this time or I would send a picture, sorry. I hope this helps.