We had a “new cat situation” so I needed to make a cat house for the kitten. Frenemy the Tomcat wonders why I didn’t make a cat house for him.
Could I make a house entirely out of scrap wood I’d salvaged from pallet stock? I expended a ridiculous amount of labor. I wound up with this starting pile of material. I wasn’t displeased.
However, Mrs. Curmudgeon likes buying cat stuff from Amazon. I narrowly intercepted her en route to buy a second flat pack cat house. It was a close call. My plans for a zero budget cat shelter went out the window. Also Mrs. Curmudgeon politely requested I not “nail together some garbage that will be sitting by our door for a decade”.
Good point. I gave up and bought real wood. Almost like a normal person.
Mrs. Curmudgeon viewed my desire to build a cat house (rather than buying one) as if I were carrying around a lance looking for a windmill. The pressure was on. It had to be nice.
I “scrounged” a half sheet of 3/4″ plywood and perfectly good foam insulation from my “stockpile”. I was looking forward to “testing” my new miter saw and this house was going to be built like a brick shithouse!
Instead of knocking together a two by four cube, I used the pocket screw jig I’d bought to build my miter saw table. This is far too nice for any cat. Heck, it’s too nice for me.
I made it taller, so a water & food bowl can sit underneath.
The internal walls are 3/4″ plywood (with a nice finish!). The insulation is 1 1/2″ thick foam.
If I’m going to build a cat house it’s going to have internal walls. I split the footprint into two sections. One section is insulated where the cat hangs out. The other is the cat’s front room, where it’ll keep its boots and greet guests. That side is insulated on the floor and external wall but not the wall where the two external “doors” will be.
I designed for a front and a rear door. So the skittish kitten (who is already no longer skittish) will always have an escape avenue. I found my other cats always hated retreating to a place with only one entrance/exit. They only go in there when it’s bitter cold outside.
However, if you put a “hallway” with a front and rear door then if a threat (likely in this case the annoying Frenemy alley cat) gets in that hallway the cat is still pinned. Solution? Two levels! A front door with access to the lower level and a rear door with access to the top level. Anything that gets in there will have to maneuver while the threatened kitten could scoot away easy peasy.
Here’s the upper and lower entrance to the cat’s main quarters. I put a plywood floor between the two levels.
Here’s a top down photo. See that the entrance side has two levels?
The internal wall was fun to make but a PITA to install.
Did I radius the upper corners of the entrances? You’re damn right I did!
Sadly, this caused sadness. My very very old Sears jigsaw is just about dead. I think it’s at least 50 years old! It lasted long enough to build an entire boat(!) but nothing lasts forever. I think it’s about to give up the ghost. If anyone wants to contribute a handheld jigsaw I’ll name it after you and explain to my cat that a virtual human on a thing called the internet helped build the cat house. 🙂
The internal wall is not merely plywood. I wanted to insulate but it was a tight fit for 1 1/2″ foam and then 3/4″ plywood. I compromised with 1 1/2″ solid wood (really just some scraps of 2″x6″); which has “doorways” that are radiused too.
Notice I painted it? Hell yeah; two coats, inside and out! If you’re going to waste labor building something, it ought to be painted. Two coats of paint took way longer than you’d expect but it did look nice.
The outer wall was 1″x6″ tongue and groove. Way too nice for a cat but I wanted to try it on my miter saw. I reasoned that I could make the corners flawless and thus skip putting on trim.
You don’t know what you don’t know. What I now know is “flawless corners” is a PITA. You need trim! In one instance I screwed up so bad I called it a night as soon as I saw how I’d nuked my material (don’t fret… there was a smaller area where I could use the board).
I’m glad I painted the inside before I blocked it off with the outer wall. (This is the lower level entrance. I think it’s fairly predator proof.)
The siding went on pretty fast. I have a cheap Harbor Freight nailgun I’ve hardly used. I had to buy it for one project where it was unavoidable. I finally got to test that on a self directed project.
I had hoped to not need trim but it sure looks pretty. I trimmed with 1″ x 4″ scraps I ripped to narrow strips.
Even better when painted. (Notice the rear entrance is up high… it goes to the second level.)
Then came the roof. I was actually worried it was too insulated. It’s a zillion times more well built and insulated than our house! I decided to forgo overbuilding the roof.
I used the last bit of 3/4″ plywood and found some shingles left over from redoing a part of my roof like a million years ago. I even found sheet metal roofing screws which I’d saved for who knows how many years. It’s not the perfect use of a sheet metal screw on an asphalt shingle but I think it’s “up to code” for a cat shelter.
(I was low on paint so I didn’t paint the underside of the roof, which will probably haunt my dreams but no cat will ever care or notice.)
Now it’s setup near our door. The kitten, of course, doesn’t give a shit. He’s sitting on my chair. (In his mind it’s his chair.)
Those eyes… that’s the look of a cat that is fixin’ to commit mayhem any second now.
Yep, that’s it. He found a bag of treats and went full maniac.
Here he is attacking the dog. (Don’t fret, the dog is the size of a freight train, she can handle it.)
Happy Memorial Day y’all.
A.C.
