Ham's wall mounted cat playground tale...
Before we get to the project, it's probably a good idea to introduce you to our cats. Afterall, they're the ones we're building all this for. That said, there's a couple of thoughts I'd like include in my design here that you might not think about...
Obviously, if we're mounting these playground pieces to a wall, we have to consider the size and weight and mounting method of each part. We will also have to consider how to position them and join them together so they form a cohesive whole.
However, less obviously, we also have to consider how our cats are likely to treat this setup. While I've designed this as a series of modular stand-alone pieces, and intend to join them with "rope" bridges featuring lots of jute or sisal rope. Not exactly original but these units will be noticably bigger than most of the commercially available units to fit our larger cats in comfortably.
There's also additional forces to consider...
Believe it or not, Belle, the smallest and lightest by far, is utterly fearless and navigates tight spaces and tree branches at high speed, sometimes bouncing off vertical walls like Trinity in the "The Matrix" movie... but thankfully not dodging bullets as she does so. Ren calls her "The Parkour Kitten"... So it's not enough to have a strong platform, but walls and ceiling options as well. Personally, I'd like her to avoid destroying our walls, so I have to design for all that.
Our other two boys are heavy. One's all young muscle and lean but very dense. The other still has his built muscles, but with an aged cat's layer of "good living"... mostly from being fed by the neighbours as well as us.
You might think the old cat will slow down, but where youth faded, his experience and superior intellect more than makes up for it.. which is why he's still the alpha.
So without further ado... let's meet our eldest.
Introducing
Clarence
Formerly a cat on the streets until he decided he'd adopt us. He literally just walked in one day....
That was a few years ago now, and he's officially the feline elder and boss of the house... at least, according to him.
Clarence likes exclusively hunting wild rabbits (a plague here in Australia), trawling the neighbourhood for any barbecues/roasts going on, lap sitting, and telling the other cats that he's in charge. He sleeps the other 22 odd hours a day.
Core philosophy: Any time is feeding/sleeping/lap time, and attention must be paid on demand, let me sleep otherwise.
Introducing
Belle
Belle, the precocious little miss who is both still a spry "kitten at heart" in personality and physique.... even if she's been fully grown for a while now.
You might think butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.. but that's how she cons you into a false sense of security....
While she is indeed a sweet lap cat, she loves hanging out on top of our AV receiver, chasing the birds off our cherries (we didn't train her to do that, but we'll take it) and playing with her favourite orange stuffed mouse toy.
That said, she does get chased by the other two... sometimes a little too aggressively.. then she runs to this wayward Ham. :-) She's not afraid to "tell me stories of a hard-done by kitten" if it gets her what she wants. Hehe.
Core philosophy: I'm innocent until I'm playful, then look the heck out! I'll dish out as much as I get and I don't care how much bigger they are than me.... unless it's the neighbours horse masquerading as a dog.
Introducing
Dusty
Dusty is another stray that simply walked into our home one day and ate Clarence's food. Much to the chagrin of Clarence at the time. Despite being the largest cat in the house, he's probably only a year or so older than Belle.
He's still skittish, socially awkward, is not exactly "the sharpest knife in the drawer".... and trying to figure out where he fits in, but we're slowly making progress.
He's the latest officially adopted cat after we confused people by putting up "cat found" posters (as opposed to "lost cat"), and checking for any chips/registration info/entry in lost pet registries.
Core Philosophy: Cat food should be dry aged for a day or two before eating, I won't often touch fresh food, but fresh milk is a must. Frankly, I just like to rub up against everything the other cats have touched, lean against the legs of my humans at any opportunity, and otherwise find a quiet corner to nap in.
Initial concepts, constructions, and concerns...
This may seem weird but having a light well that bridges two floors of our home is a hard thing to draw.
So I had to imagine (roughly) what it could look like from the upper floor. Naturally, having a house that's.... 20+ years old and built to... "minimum standards" (as is common in my area) with cracking walls. I had to make sure I was going to be able to mount my modules to the wall.
Obviously, I had to consider the weight, strength of construction, and provide myself with mounting options. That meant 12mm (1/2") plywood, torsion box contruction, with light-weight reinforcement of the joints. I chose to build a solid wall of plywood wherever contact with the wall is made so I can screw it in wherever the studs may eventually be.
See a zoomed in image of my sketch here.Why build a playground like this?
Have you seen the prices of cat trees these days?!
Well actually, there's some more important reasons than that... namely:
- We have two big male tomcats, and one much smaller female. She needs a place to call her own, and being the most adventurous of the three, she's probably the one who'll use these boxes most often when they're installed.
- Cat trees are often built for small cats, are largely cheaply made, and take up floor space that we simply don't have to spare. So...
- We have a rather cavernous light well over 7.5m (24ft) high. Weirdly enough, our cats have all shown (at one point or another) interest in seeing how far they can go up into that space..
- The weather in Canberra can be dreadful and three cats cooped up for days on end does no favours for inter-feline relationships. Sometimes the boys "play" with Belle out of boredom, but never fear, sometimes Belle "plays" with them too.... opting for a surprise, high-speed strike and retreat (or simply fly past) strategy. Giving Belle a place of her own to retreat to and claw everything on the way saves our furniture.
That said, it seems that Dusty and Clarence have been enjoying the mostly finished box in it's temporary staging position as we get the rest organised.
Ren made the furry pillow inserts, and I think that they obviously work as intended. :~)
Here's a three image strip showing the construction, the overall finished structure, and a cute closer-up shot of Dusty using it.
Here is the first and biggest module to house our bigger cats. This double "bunk style" box will ultimately be mounted to the wall.. although we have to convince Dusty to let us do that....
For the "eagle eyed" readers amongst you, you may have noticed that I've added reinforcing chamfered/beveled strips on the inside of every 90 degree join both inside and outside the box, as shown in the middle image. Clearly those strips were not there in the left image. Gotta say that was teaching me to keep practicing my compound angle skills, that's for sure! Nonetheless I got there in the end. While the box was fairly strong to begin with, these strips have quadrupled the glue surface area of the joins and is now able to handle my weight (considerably more than a cat) without significantly increasing the weight.
Originally, it was going to be a simple box with a padded insert. However, knowing our cats, they'd eventually figure our that there's a shiny flat surface above and they might accidentally roll off that in an unfortunate moment of inattention. So I added a 50mm (2") wall to the top side of the box and asked Ren to make a second padded bed. Each padded bed is attached with lots of hook and loop (Velcro) to the box so if they do roll partially off, they can claw the pillow and it'll hold them in place while they figure their next move. Otherwise it'd be a decent drop, given that this will be placed roughly 3-3.5m (10-12 ft) off the floor below. The wood edging should stop them from rolling up and over the edge though... although our cats have done stranger things.
The next two pieces....
Continuing on our "box theme" we have the matter of making our spiral way around the walls of the light well. I suppose you could call these the "corner landings" of our rope bridge stair well/playground.
So instead of a mid-wall design like the big box above, I've gone with two cubes that have two adjacent faces featuring holes. That way they can be put in the corner. Naturally both will feature the same "bunk, two level bed" design so if a cat is napping inside, a cat can hop up and over without issue. Conversely ,if one is on top, the lower section allows travel through the box too.
Imagine there are two of these...
Here is the first of the two corner boxes that I planned, assembled, and Ren then painted it. Ren also got the velco for attaching the upper and lower pillows installed, and has made the pillows already.
Ren asked that the holes be made smaller than the big box for a "safety" and/or "cozier" feel for the cats. That made sanding, joint reinforcement and painting inside the box much more difficult.. so I delegated the painting to Ren since her hands are smaller and more dextrous than mine.
Unfortunately, the 450mm wide "cube" does not account for the 600mm wide gaps between studs we've since found on our installation site. So the rear-most corner will need numerous deep screws to hold this up and do all the literal "heavy lifting".
This will be placed between the landing pad (discussed next) and the larger, side mounted box discussed above.
The second of these boxes will eventually be placed after the big box and linked back to the original upper-stairs hand rail. However, I'm thinking it might be an opportunity to raise it's level so the cats can look out of our upper most window.
The smallest and quirkiest part... The landing pad.
I needed an odd part that cats could jump down onto from the upper hand rail (effectively a gyprock wall). If they were going to explore the shelf created by our vent below it, leaving all kinds of paw prints all over it... I figured I'd build a better spot for them, and to link it the rest of the playground. In a real way, it'll be the first part they'll use. Later I'll build... <em>something</em> (I haven't decided yet), that will bring the last bit back around and join to the hand rail that extends to the third wall of the light well, effectively creating a loop to stop anyone "being chased into a dead end" scenarios.
Landing pad?
Ok, so we have an open plan space which has the master bedroom balcony overlooking the light well and lower floor. The cats, in their not-quite-behaved manner simply love hopping up onto the... errr.. hand rail/wall that goes nowhere with a stairwell on one side, and a light well on the other.
It wasn't until Belle, whom we "separated from the other cats at the outset" (for the initial feline integration routine).... pulled her rendition of Rapunzel. As a 750g kitten, she discovered a way to hop down from that wall, onto a lower vent, and then down to our cabinetry and from there, found the sweet freedom of the lower floors. Houdini had nothing on her. We didn't even consider that a possibility, but apparently, what do we know?
This "landing pad" is going to be placed on top of the aforementioned protruding vent, in the corner of the light well, then joined to the wall with a sisal rope "scratching post/ladder" to prevent cats destroying the Gyprock (drywall). This box couldn't have a lld, so I created a soon-to-be-padded shelf to land on safely or sleep on.. From there, it'll be connected to sisal lined bridges to the next corner box, which then goes to the big box, then to another corner box, and I'm thinking about building a ramp, set of steps, or something to join it back to the wall.. just so there's a loop rather than a "dead end", should any two cats get "boisterous"...
Putting it up...
You might think that this is a reasonably straightforward installation... hoist the box up on the wall, then screw it in.... but it didn't go up that easily!
I originally looked into buying a "cabinet lifter"... basically a flat platform on an extendable pole to support the cabinet as you're attaching it to the wall(s). Yet they were prohibitively expensive.
So,after a tasty beverage or two... I thought about using what I had laying around.
Ham's DIY (yet surprisingly effective) cabinet lifter, using things you might already have around the home.
You need three things and some DIY ingenuity...
- A reliable and extendable painting pole that uses holes for height control. (The friction fit ones may not be ideal for heavier loads).
- A means to connect a flat platform to your paint pole. In my case, a 3D printer, (but you could glue an old paint roller handle to a plank and reinforce it that way).
- A car jack (I found the scissor type to be particularly effective in theis case).
Some scrap plywood sheeting, some screws and washers, and a nut/bolt would also be handy. :-)
A car jack?
Ok, so the concept is simple. The extendable paint pole has numerous holes which determine the length (and thus height) of the upper end of the pole. But the big problem is that those holes (on my paint pole at least) are about 20cm (8") apart. If I need more granularity, I needed to be able to adjust it up and down...
... and this is where my car's scissor jack works well, but safety is improved when it's screwed to a scrap sheet of 18mm (3/4") plywood for a sturdy tilt-free base at the bottom, and another block of wood bolted to the top of the jack, featuring a deep-but-not-drilled-through forstner-bit hole wide enough to receive the back end of my pole (to stop the pole slipping off the top of the jack).
You still need to hold the pole and carefully lift the cabinet one section at a time...
What about the flat platform at the top of the pole?
I was just going to design and 3D print a sturdy paint-pole attachable platform, then use BluTak (you know, that stuff teenagers stick posters to their walls with) to stop the cabinet from sliding off that platform.
Easier said than done!
Well, one of the greatest challenges was actually figuring out what kind of thread is on a paint pole. For the Fusion users out there, I can tell you that it's NOT in your prefab thread selection menus.
So I had to learn how to create a custom thread in Fusion... this involves knowing where the thread data is stored, and how to edit an XML file... and of course, identifying the thread in question, and knowing all the specs for that particular thread. Those details can be found in an article I'll write soon. It's way beyond the spec of a cat playground article....
But you never know what you'll need to learn to finish a seemingly simple task... So sayeth the voice of experience. :-)
So without much further ado...
Here is my finished product. Simply stick the butt of your paint pole into the top of the jack, balance your cabinet so that it's slightly more likely to tip toward the wall (a lean is better than a fall), raise it up, one paint-pole notch at a time, then fine tune the height using the jack. Ok, so you can't walk away from it, you need someone constantly holding this thing, and another to attach the cabinet to the wall, but it works!
So I just built my own version of a $185 tool (half price of the pair of poles sold above), using scrap wood, stuff I had laying about, and about $8 of filament.
If you're interested in printing your own copy of my printable "platform/head" for the paint pole, click the image above or head to my Thingiverse link HERE.
Did it work?
Believe it or not, it really worked better than I hoped. I still needed a helper, but once they put the cabinet on the pole (in the right spot for balance purposes) pressed it into the BluTak, and I slowly lifted it into position and held it there. A slight lean against the wall, to align it with the spirit level and marked positions for the studs... Ren drove those screws in, completely unencumbered by the weight of the box itself.
And the result? Show me your cat playground already!
The first two boxes installed, and even bridged.
Getting these two boxes up to quite some doing, even with Ham's not-quite-cabinet-lifter, and Ren's willingness to drive screws into the walls.
Introducing
Our newly accessible cat playground.
With the upstairs hand rail/wall running along the bottom of the photo (please forgive the angle) you can see the top of the sisal cat ladder and the hooks that keep it on the wall in the bottom-right. The landing pad, which sits on top of the vent that sticks out there, is ready for cats to jump down onto, and the two far boxes are linked via the bridges.
Obviously, I have the second corner box to install, and then I need to figure out a way to complete the loop....
... but after that....
I think I'll probably add more to help them explore and reach the upper pillows in the future...
