Upstairs Cat Platforms – Part 9

In case you missed it, here are the previous links for this now-completed project:

I just added 4 new cat platforms to the upstairs hall.  That makes a total of 25 platforms I’ve built in the past 3 years.  TWENTY FIVE.  If that doesn’t earn me Crazy Cat Lady status I don’t know what will!  OK, maybe walking down the street with a shopping cart full of cats…  shudder.  A few years ago my bro gave me this awesome mug:

Which was obviously total foreshadowing.

Here’s a quick overview of the 25 platforms:

There’s 2 in the dining room window:

There’s 10 in the downstairs hall/living room entrance, including the original 3:

A 4th I added to give Birdie access to the laundry room litter box:

       

Plus 5 more leading from the living room alcove down to the hall:

       

And the 1 covering the wine rack in the living room entrance, which wraps around to the TV platform:

There’s 5 more on the far side of the living room allowing further access to the alcove, as well as prime bird watching from the window:

      

So that’s a total of 2 + 10 + 5 = 17 downstairs platforms.

Moving upstairs, there’s 8 more in the upstairs hall, including the original 3:

Plus a 4th to house the litter box and it’s new privacy screen:

       

And, as of this past weekend, 4 more framing the girl cave doorway:

I think it makes the doorway look kind of neat – like the entrance to a temple or shrine or something.

The new platforms will allow Birdie to get as close as possible to the master bedroom without actually going in.  She pretty much refuses to go into the bedroom because Bonkers spends most of his time sleeping in there.  She WANTS to be in the bedroom, but there’s nowhere safe for her to go.

It all started last month when I decided to make a new platform for the bedroom wall.  I used my awesome table saw and cut a pine board down to size, then painted it:

       

I hung it on the bedroom wall across from the bed, next to the window.  I put a rug on top of my t-shirt chest so the kitties would know it was a cat approved area.  I carried her into the bedroom and put her on the new platform a few times, but she immediately jumped down and bolted back to her hallway platforms.  Darwin, of course, thought I’d made it just for him:

      

While it’s nice to have a new platform for Darwin, he doesn’t need it.  The entire house is his oyster, whereas Birdie is still scared of the floor and spends 98% of her day & night up on platforms.  Some would argue that it’s BECAUSE I’ve made so many platforms that she’s never on the floor… but I would disagree.  She feels safe & happy on the platforms and that’s all that matters!  Who knows what her life was like before she wound up at the shelter, but it couldn’t have been easy.  If my girl wants platforms, my girl’s gonna get platforms nods.

I took the new platform out of the bedroom and moved it into the hall outside the bedroom door to see if Birdie would approve of it’s new location.  In the first photo Darwin is sleeping on the new platform and Birdie is sleeping on her original platform at the far end of the hall.  But in the 2nd photo, Birdie is sleeping on the new platform, which she did all by herself!  I was in the bedroom taking a nap and she jumped up there to be close to mummy.  I was so happy:

      

So this past weekend I built 3 new platforms to surround the Girl Cave doorway and allow Birdie to get from her original platforms over to the new one without touching the ground.  There’s one long one above the door and 2 smaller ones on either side.  Darwin was so thrilled that he jumped up before I finished building:

And then about a half hour later, as I was packing up my tools, Birdie came upstairs and was instantly enthralled and hasn’t really come down since:

       

For the past two days this is all we can see of Birdie – just her ears when we look upstairs at the new platforms:

On Sunday night, the first night with the new platforms, Birdie slept on the way top and Darwin slept on the one right below [hooray!]:

All day yesterday and all last night, Birdie was conked out in complete bliss mode:

      

It’s like she’s saying “My loyal subjects FINALLY built me a worthy throne and I’m never moving”.  It makes me happy that she loves the new platforms so much 🙂  Yesterday morning she didn’t even come down to eat breakfast.  But thankfully this morning she did.  I think she’s doing her best to declare the new platforms HERS and to make sure Darwin knows that.

DUH I posted this without finishing it apparently.  There were a few more pictures I wanted to share!  I wanted to mention that since the 2 platforms with the red brackets connect on one side to the door frame [for the best stability] and the other side to the wall, I had to make these little braces to affix to the wall to make up the ¾” difference in depth:

       

I anchored them to the wall even though that was probably overkill, because they aren’t actually attached to the shelves.  In fact, they don’t actually do much…  Maybe I don’t even need them?  I just felt better having something solid between the shelf and the wall to account for the ¾” difference.  I also had to account for the depth difference when attaching the red brackets to each shelf.  One bracket sits flush against the edge of the shelf while the other hangs over by ¾”.  I used wall anchors for the 2 brackets that attached to the wall.

I also wanted to post 2 sunset pictures I took from our deck a couple weeks ago [with my Nikon DSLR]:

       

It was so weird to look outside and see such a yellow sky!  I sat on the deck taking pictures and loving all the phases the sky went through.  I also wanted to post this silly picture of Bonkers – he got out onto the deck when I was painting the air conditioner and was peering into the girl cave windows:

That’s all!