For many years now we’ve had a rather large cat tower that I constructed. Since I was needing to redo the carpeting I thought it would be a good time to document the construction.

First off let me say, yes it’s huge. If you have the room for it though, I highly recommend some kind of large cat structure. Cat’s love being taller than people and having something to climb (especially to get away from toddlers). It also makes a really, really good scratching post. This single cat house, located in our living room, keeps our cats from scratching anything else in the house. You can make a large cat house like this for a pretty reasonable cost, and it is fairly easy to re-carpet it in the future when the carpet starts to look worn.

Items required to make this:

• Concrete tube forms (I used 1 12″ diameter and 1 10″ diameter, each 4′ long)
• 1″x1″ Wood bar (I used about 10′ of this)
• 24″ diameter particle board circle for the base.
• 16″ diameter particle board or plywood circle for the top
• Cloth and stuffing for 16″ circle
• Lots of screws
• Carpet

Tools used:

• Drill
• Screwdriver
• Staple Gun
• Utility knife

All this stuff can be picked up at your local Lowe’s or Home Depot for a reasonable price, except the carpet. Good new carpet will work, but It’s kind of expensive. Look around for somewhere to get scraps or slightly used carpet. We bought our carpet from the local Habitat ReStore. The big hardware stores also sometimes have a scrap bin that you can pick up cheap pieces of carpet at. You will want real carpet with a sturdy backing that is looped. You can use cut loop carpet, but in our experience it will shed a lot, is more difficult to assemble, and it’s less fun for the cats to scratch.  You will also want to avoid the cheaper lightweight outdoor/utility carpet as the cats will shred it in about a week.

Assembly:

In my case, I cut off about 18″ of the 10″ diameter form and used it to create a tube at the top. Each column has one piece of wood bar running the full length attached to the internal wall and a 12″ or so piece attached to the opposite side. The bottom of both of these bars are used to attach the column to the base, so it should be flush with the bottom of the tube. I’m pretty sure that a simpler one column would be possible, but you would want to use 3 or 4 points of contact at the base. Attach the smaller bar with 3 or 4 screws, and the larger one with just 3 or so. Ignore the holes in the forms (in an earlier iteration I made holes in the tower for the cats to hide in, but they didn’t really use them and since we now have a toddler these would quickly become cat traps).

I used a horizontal piece of tube for part of the top and had to cut a half circle in the top of the taller tube. This was done with an utility knife and a lot of trial and error using the horizontal piece as a template. I attached a cross beam at the bottom of this half circle which can then be used to attach the top to the tower. The picture shows this after the carpet is on, but it is important to do this before attaching the carpet!

The carpet will need to be measured and cut. The short tower used a piece that was flush at both ends, the taller tower was flush at the bottom, but had 3 or 4 inches spare at the top to fold over. The horizontal part had a little over twice it’s length in carpet (see later). It is easiest to cut the carpet from the back with a utility knife. The carpet will be attached to the towers by screwing through the carpet into the long wood bar that runs the length of the column. I started with the bottom end and tried to line it up flush. When I had it lined up so that the carpet would roll up straight, I then put in just three screws, rolled the carpet up and put in about 5 screws that went through both layers of carpet and into the wood bar. The carpet is pretty stiff so it doesn’t have to be super tight, just try to keep it from having bubbles or unevenness.

The top horizontal tower is a litte different. I cut a piece of carpet a little under 2x the length of the tube, then I rolled up the tube in the middle and folded the ends into the tube. The carpet is stiff enough that this holds in place on it’s own. This is nice as it ends up with a nice soft inside that the cat’s can sit in.

This is the only place I found that I needed to use a drill, as screwing through particle board is not fun. In my case the holes for this were already drilled, however I would recommend lining up and drilling the holes before carpeting the base. Drilling through carpet can be a bit tricky (it can wind around the bit) and it is much simpler to measure out and mark the wood if it isn’t covered with carpet. How best to do this is left as an exercise for the reader, but be sure to make sure that the support posts are in a roughly square shape. Don’t make them all in a strait line or your tower will wobble! Also make sure to mark the bottom of the base in the middle so that you know which holes are for which when attaching it after the carpeting stage.

The base is a circular piece of particleboard. I covered this in carpet using a staple gun. The cats scratch this a lot less and so it tends to last a lot longer. This is the first time I’ve re-carpeted the bottom. I kind of went nuts with the staples since I don’t really anticipate having to ever remove this carpet. To do this simply cut out a square of carpet 3 or 4 inches larger than the circle. Fold over one side and staple down well at one point. Then go around the circle trying to keep the carpet flush with the edge. I tried to keep my stapes near the edge and used the utility knife to cut off excess carpet as I went through the process.

Now you will need to attach the base to the towers. Place your smaller tower upside down and put the base on top of it. Line up the marked holes in the base use some long (3 inch or so) wood screws to attach the base to the tower. I found attaching the larger tower was easiet sideways. You should now have a slightly wobbly tower.

I then attached the two towers together by screwing from the smaller tower to a small piece of wood I placed as a backing on the taller tower. In my case I had to use a small spacer (carpet scrap) as my towers have a little bit of space betweeen them. Once they are attached the tower structure should be pretty sturdy.

The visible top of the small tower is covered in padding and fabric (in this case an old ruined wool sweater that is popular with our cats). I put in a few L shaped brackets and the attached this on one side to the wood bar in the short tower. Another way to do this would be to use a piece of the 1×1 bar and attach it to the bottom of the top and then attach it to the tower by screwing through the sides of the tower. I probably would have done this had I not been out of wood.

Fold down the carpet on the tall tower and then fasten the horizontal tube to the top of that tower. I’ve done this a couple of ways over the years. In the past it seems to have not worked well to try to screw it to the tower. This time I used twine that I wrapped around the tube and the wooden bar in the top of the tower multiple times. I’ve also used rope in a similar manner and it has worked well. The cat’s do attack it, but the’ve not done too much damage so far.

Initial construction was a bit of a process, but the cat’s love having such a massive structure to climb on.  We’ve had this structure for over 4 years now and I think I’ve redone the carpet on average about once a year, and at this point it is a pretty quick process.  Being able to cheaply redo the carpet means that we can keep the structure looking relatively good.  If you are looking for a good way to spoil your cats I recommend it.

~Duncan