Think you love your cats? Well you have nothing on Eliza Fischer and Tiffany Barrow in Hatfield, Massachusetts. They did a $5,000 remodel on their home….just for their seven cats! Rebecca Mountain, owner of Mountain Pet Products did the remodel, which she says took about 70 hours.
Here’s the before shots. “The open concept design was ideal for creating a kitty super highway using shelves, cat trees and walkways,” says Mountain.
If your room already has long beams, like theirs did, you already have a structure in place.
Large windows that get light are perfect for window shelves, says Mountain.
“It was important to make it wide enough so the cats had plenty of room to stretch out and relax, so I made the shelf 12 inches wide with slightly raised edges,” she adds
Then she added shelves. These are Mountain Cat Climber shelves.
Mountain used the extra space between the sliding glass door and the ceiling to create a unique walkway for the cats.
“The suspended walkways which run the entire length of the room were a given and I knew as soon as I saw the room that walkways would be perfect,” says Mountain.
To access the walkways, Mountain created a custom cat tree, complete with a hammock.
One of the owners’ cats, Naked is an older Devon Rex with some balance issues. This made them worried about him falling out the high walkway. Mountain had an easy solution: raised sides.
Cats like to have multiple entries and exits, especially when there are multiple cats using the structures.
Mountain added a second access point in the center of the room by the big fireplace. This one she created using a large beam and added small steps to create a spiral staircase.
Where the walkway ends, Mountain added more custom shelves along that wall.
And, as a fun affect, she create custom shelves in the shape of leaves along the adjoining wall.
And finally, the cats needed somewhere to sharpen those claws! So Mountain completed the room with: her Wall Mount Vertical Scratching Posts, an incline scratcher and over 200 feet of manila rope wrapped around the center post in the room.
“This was the perfect opportunity and something I always wished to do,” says Mountain. If you need help designing a Catification project of your own, contact Mountain, she help with any project, no matter how big or small.
