Creative Half-Asleep Chris is one of the people who delighted their cat with a cardboard fort-slash-castle.
"I had built my previous two cats forts as well (Fort Reggie, and Tom's Time Machine) and since we were bored right at the start of the lockdown, it seemed like a fun way to pass the time," they told Bored Panda. "It took a few days to build, and since it was built when I couldn't go to the shops, it was constructed entirely from things I had around the house."
We're talking odd offcuts of wood from here and there, an old shoe rack Half-Asleep Chris took apart, and other various leftovers from their previous projects. "Each level inside the fort is a different material too, for optimal cat-isfaction -- one is plain wood, one cardboard, one fabric, and then the top-level (or penthouse suite) carpeted."
Half-Asleep Chris said their cat Ralph -- who, by the way, is a gigantic fluffball -- went immediately inside... for all of 4 seconds. "He then proceeded to ignore it for several days. But soon he took to it, and I'd often find him sleeping on his penthouse suite. About two months later I bought/renovated him a cat-sized Chaise Lounge, and since then, he hasn't used it, much preferring the Chaise Lounge."
They even posted a YouTube video about the project that is as entertaining as it's educational.
Seattle artist Naomi Haverland has a cat named Craig. He is a hairless Sphinx that her daughter Roxanne bought for herself, and he also got a new place.
"We started the cardboard cat castle right after school was canceled and quarantine went into effect," Haverland said. "We had extra free time on our hands, and we always order a lot from Amazon, so we have a lot of boxes. We noticed that Craig loves boxes. And it began by just taping 2 or 3 boxes together and slowly got more and more elaborate from there. We just loved watching how happy the castle made him."
Craig couldn't get enough of it. "He loved smacking the dog and then dashing off into the fort to protect himself," Haverland recalled. However, she and her daughter eventually had to tear the castle down because they moved but they are excited to build it back up again since they have a lot of moving boxes. "We think we can do it even better this time."
Reddit user Nat_Log3982 and their boyfriend's cat is called Calcifer. The orange tabby is just about 15 weeks old but he already loves to go on walks and hikes with his humans.
Similar to Haverland, Nat_Log3982 recently started building a PC during quarantine and had a lot of boxes from the parts that came in. They saw how Calcifer loved to jump around and play in them and figured that this would be a great way to recycle.
"It took about 16 hours to complete, including the time it took to plan and look at pictures online. I found a picture of a mini cardboard temple and decided to scale up the design and modify the look slightly. It took about 100 mini sticks of hot glue and 3 box cutter blades to cut out the pieces and put them together," Nat_Log3982 said.
Calcifer also loves the pagoda. "Because of the holes I cut into the floors of the levels, he can launch himself through the pagoda and run around the roofs while chasing the toys he brings into it," Nat_Log3982 explained. "He likes to sleep in it whenever I'm sewing or painting. He also likes to show us how quickly he can get to the top level and will meow at us if we don't praise him quickly enough with pets and attention when he sits in it. Overall, it was a fun and long experience that I would do again."
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