SonoTube

Well, here's step two of the new cat tree... I bought a 4 foot length of 12 inch diameter SonoTube. They use this for making concrete columns... and cat tree perches. Around $10 at the local home improvement store. I cut it in half, then one of them in half again, longways.

Here's Toby in the tube, and Libby looking a little disgruntled that she didn't beat him in there:



And of course, two minutes later, here's Libby in the tube, and Toby wondering how he got displaced. Doesn't she look a lot more pleased with herself in this second picture?



I am planning that the tube will be the highest perch on the cat tree, and the half pipe next to it will be one level lower, with the ladder in the previous post connecting one to the other, at a good climbing angle. The semicircular bit of plywood you see to the right of the half pipe will be at one end of it if I can figure out a way to make a washable cover that will fit over it. That old yellow towel (from the 70's, I'm ashamed to admit) will be the padding for the half tube, and I'll recover the green fleece pillow for the whole tube. Thinking about maybe dots of velcro for the covers, because if I put little ties, surely someone would untie them. :D

More later! And if any of you have any good suggestions, I'm always open. :P

Cat Tree and Pillow top

I took a bunch of half square triangles I had, and put together this little pillow top to go with a quilt I'm giving away for Christmas. The hsts were little bonus triangles - I used most of them to go around the border of the quilt, but had a BUNCH left over. The resulting pillow is way too contrasty, but I figure, hey, it matches the border perfectly. :) And I wanted to try the depression block, too.


I've also been starting on a new cat tree. The one I have now is over 20 years old and has been through a lot. The sisal rope has been clawed completely loose in places (which is really fine, I WANTED it to be used) but it's looking awfully shabby. The carpet on the top is coming off, the carpet on the middle perch is shredding strings. I bought some sonotube to make perches with this time, getting fancy! Also, when the local fabric store went out of business, I got some of the heavy duty tubes that upholstry fabric is rolled on. My nephew cut one in half for me, and drilled three holes in each tube for dowels. I'm covering it with more sisal, and this will be a cute little three-rung stepladder between levels.


Toby was wearing himself out, chasing the rope end wiggling around as I was wrapping the ladder, but I stopped and taped the free end down when I decided I needed some hot glue to put around the wrapped dowel. He came over to check the ladder out, then got tired of waiting for me to entertain him again.

I've even been thinking about doing some quilted, washable covers for the new sonotube perches. Here's a picture of a tree with sonotube perches, but my cat tree is going to look different, with half tubes and a whole tube cave for them to snuggle in. Have any of you ever combined quilting and cat-tree making? Any advice?