Of Kittehs And Corners

Deidre says: you may not shower until I am done lying on the bath mat.

So in my ever-expanding quest to catify the apartment to a) make them happy and b) help ease tensions, I re-did a corner of the living room again, all new and kitteh-like.  I moved the stairstep scratcher into the bedroom (its intended purchase was to provide steps to go up to the bed, though it has never been used that way), moved a litter box into that corner, added another wall shelf, cut the Cardboard House of Awesome in half, and added a sky chair.

Wait, why did I cut the Cardboard House of Awesome in half?  It has four stories inside made of super industrial cardboard.  Well, one of those stories went bye-bye after it was peed upon.  Two more have buckled and been clawed to death (btw, yes – considering I’ve had the House for I think a couple of years, that’s durable for them to have lasted this long).  They could no longer hop through all the stories up to the rooftop.  So I took the inner floor that was still intact and one of the buckling ones that was the least damaged (it wouldn’t matter if it was buckling if it was upside down and on the ground level), and made it a two-story House of Awesome instead.  I added a basket with the warming blanket I made them on top, and now they have a salvaged Cardboard House of Awesome!

I first tried making new levels out of the giant box my massage table came in. Since they weren’t strong enough, it was a wash, but Yuan had a good time helping me.

Now, the sky chair.  Have you ever seen those beds that are pillows hung from the ceiling with cloth, like this?  I’ve long wanted to get one for my kitties, but I am, alas, but a poor blogger and funds are tight.  So, I made a makeshift one of my own!

All I did really was take one of their pillows that my grandmother had made them years ago, and suspended it in a macrame plant hanger.  Voilà!  Instant kitty sky chair!

So this is what the new-and-improved cat corner looks like:

Yuan really likes those Ruth Thompson prints (he paws and meows at them), so I’m imagining him chilling in the sky chair looking up at his favorite artwork.

I hope they like the changes.  Yuan has already been in the cup on the stairstep scratcher in the bedroom (I’m hoping its proximity to my pillows will facilitate two – or three – cats sharing bedtime with me with less of an issue, though it has been getting better already anyway).  But so far the corner has not been claimed (I just put up the sky chair this afternoon, and was modifying the Cardboard House of Awesome at about three this morning).  Maybe I’ll put out some catnip to signal that construction is complete.

Now if only I could mount a sky chair for *me* from the ceiling…