DIY Cat Shelf: Walkway Much Better Than a Cat Tree

is your cat climbing things that it shouldn't my solution coming up [Music] my name is francisco and welcome to nine lives to live where i and my three cats calypso skyfall and mr muffin help you improve the lives of your indoor cats so why is your cat climbing things that it shouldn't one of the big problems that indoor cats face is boredom and alleviating that boredom will help you and will help them board cats can act out and they will create mischief just to entertain themselves and if you're watching this channel you probably watch a lot of youtube videos of cats doing just that thing one way to reduce boredom is to help them to do things inside the house that they normally would do outside and climbing is one of those things cats love to climb and for good reason one of those reasons is that they can see better from up there they can find prey more easily when they're outdoors and that helps them to survive they are also prey and being able to climb up trees allows them to get away from predators or potential predators and also helps them to survive i think it's also fun for them they climb for entertainment i think they get some of this from their uh bigger cousins out in the wild and you can see this in kittens which are always trying to climb up things but inside our houses they don't have that many opportunities to climb and so they will climb things that we don't want them to climb when they're kittens it might be drapes and where when they're older it might be our counters or our tables we shoot them off our counters and we spray them off our table in general scratching posts are not tall enough to give a satisfying climb although some of them have a little perch on top where they can sit some cat trees are pretty tall but once they get to the top there's nowhere to go so i decided to give my cats something a little bit more substantial to climb to keep them off of my more valuable furniture it's a platform that runs around half of my living room with two ways to climb on and get off i call it the skyway on one end there's a tall post that goes from the floor to the ceiling and on the other end there's a little ramp that they can get off on the stairs or climb up from the stairs in between they have a long narrow runway and also a shorter but wider runway from here they can perch and look down on their territory or just sit and relax like a lion pride on a tree they also like to play with each other up there and uh will chase the each other through it when they get the zoomies it gives them a lot of exercise that they wouldn't get normally indoors building it took some time but it wasn't really that hard i used eight inch knotty pine boards i wanted it to fit into the decor of my living room so i routed one edge to give it a more finished look and i stained it so that it would match more or less the color of my floor i put carpet on it so that it wouldn't be slippery for the cats but i tacked it on just in case i wanted to take it off in the future the main post has three small platforms where they can jump down this is because cats in general have a hard time climbing down a post or a tree they have strong backs and hind legs which makes it easy for them to jump and climb up but cat claws curve backwards so it's difficult for them to climb down they can't climb down head first like a squirrel so they prefer to jump down on the other side of the platform i have the stairs which climb up naturally so all it took was one small platform to give them access to uh runway from there i also made wooden brackets this was extra work but it was just so that the whole skyway would fit into my living room a little bit better the brackets and supports are screwed into the studs of the wall so the whole system is very sturdy this little railing is more for me than for them the open end just made me a little bit nervous although i don't think they would have cared skyfall calypso and mr muffins certainly seem to enjoy being up there and i don't have dogs but i imagine that if i did have dogs they would certainly like to be able to have this space where they could get away from them when they felt like relaxing my friend jenny liked what i did for my cats so i made something similar for her with some differences her runways are less elaborate but they all connect to a central post where the cats can climb and hang out the construction was easier for her skyway because there was no routing of the edges and they are held up by shelf brackets which are store-bought and i didn't have to actually make them installing it was a little bit more complicated because i had to build the central piece carpet it and attach it to the floor and to the ceiling the runways are all carpeted and attached to the central structure with metal brackets she has five cats so they needed a little extra space where they can play and get away from the others if you rent you might want to consider installing something that's a little bit smaller something that you can take down and take with you easily enough for those of you who can't install something like this i would suggest improving their window setup cats get an enormous amount of pleasure looking out a window especially if it's an upstairs window where they can actually look down on everything as if they were in a tree so i built this little platform that i can put on the windowsill it prevents them from having to sit on the groove of the window which looks pretty uncomfortable because windows are so important to cats i will soon be doing a video on that and i will link it up here as soon as it is finished like and share if you found this interesting and please subscribe if you'd like to see more and see you in the next one

Channel: 9 Lives To Live

Views: 976,615

Keywords: indoor cats, house cats, kitten, kittens, cat shelf, cat walkway, cat tree, cat climbing, cat climbing furniture, cat damaging furniture, DIY cat shelf, DIY cat walkway, cat playground, cat playground DIY, cat is bored, cat entertainment, home improvement for cats, cat projects, cat DIY project, why do cats climb

Id: zamKzMi63Ng

Length: 5min 44sec (344 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 28 2021