With two Maine Coon kittens coming, we decided that we needed a cat tree. Never one to do things by halves, and not being enamored of the $2-300 dollar trees I was seeing at the local pet shops, I decided to build my own. Everything I’m doing here could be done easier, with simpler tools (or almost no tools if you have things pre-cut) but I still would not call this a novice project.

A lot of times I’ll at least have a sketch of what I’m trying to do. This time I’m just making it up as I go along!

Some of the things I’ll be using. I may or may not be using all of these things. The carpet was an 8x10 remnant purchased from Lowe’s for $44, the electric stapler is an inexpensive ($30) Stanley model. Two 50’ rolls of 3/8” sisal rope, some hook blades for my utility knife, carpet glue which I may or may not use, a Quikrete 12” concrete form tube, ditto, and 2x4’s. I normally try to keep 2x4’s on hand --- any I don’t use for this project will be going into shelving for the outbuilding.

The first thing was to decide at least somewhat on what we (really “I”) want to do. Sunny wants a naturalistic cat tree, so to this end we trekked out into the woods to search for acceptable branches or small trees. We found more than we bargained for. We haven’t been back there since autumn of 2004, and it appears that Hurricane Ivan blew over a couple of huge swamp oaks. I’m talking HUGE. If I can get back there I may take a photo of the roots up in the air so that folks can see what HUGE means exactly.

I arbitrarily chose 2x4’ as the base measurements. Checking out the area where we plan to put this thing, that should extend past the window in the living room so that kitties can lounge on the tree and watch birds and squirrels outside.

Figure 2 shows the 2x4’s for the base cut to length. Four pieces cut to 21” and two pieces cut to 24”. 2x4’s have an actual dimension of 1.5” by 3.5”. These measurements gave me my 2x4’ base.

The base is glued with Titebond II glue and screwed with 2.5” x 1/4” lag screws countersunk into the 2x’s as shown in Figure 3. I want this to be strong as I figure it will have about 40 pounds worth of cat playing on it once they’re fully grown!

In putting in the screws I first drilled a 3/4” countersink using a spade bit, then following the mark left in the center, pre-drilled the screw holes with a 3/8” twist drill bit. 

This made a decent countersink so that the lag screw heads won’t be poking up into the carpet.

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