Cardboard Castle for Cats
In our house it would be a sin to throw a good box out. Cardboard boxes are great material for building something new and exiting for the cats. Since my cats are indoor cats, it's important to change-up their environment and give them new experiences. Here are some of our newest cardboard projects.
Cardboard Castle
I went to a hardware store and got some square moving boxes.
From these I was able to make a cardboard castle for my cats. I cut doors and windows in them and made passes through them so the cats can walk from one box to another. Victor enjoys sitting in solitude in the middle of the bottom floor, while Ronja always sits on top of it all.
Unfortunately the top of these boxes are not strong enough to hold a deaf darling. So I had to use one of the sides that usually flips down, to reinforce the roof of each box. Apart from this issue, the boxes are quite sturdy and suitable for making box castle. We always save big boxes, but because they are never the same size, it makes it challenging to put them together. It's so much easier, when the boxes has the same measurements. Also most boxes aren't completely square like these, which I like. Another thing that made this project easier, was a little Danish invention called Hubu.
HUBU
For most box project tape will suffice to put it all together. However in time you usually need to replace the tape as it grows tired under the weight of the cat or because of play. So I'm happy to have discovered these colorful things from Hubu. They are plastic screws specifically made to put cardboard together. They are originally meant for building castles for children. But I use them for my furbabies. And they really work great! They save me a lot of time trying to tape and re-tape things, cause once in place they will stick. I've only ever had one breaking. My only concern is that I'd wish there was a longer version, as I sometime need to put more layers of cardboard together. I contacted the owner of the company about this issue and they took in my feedback. So maybe some day that will be possible to buy too.
Hubu didn't sponsor my screws - I bought them with my own money. But for me, it's money well spend, as I make a lot of these box projects and they make projects like the cardboard castle possible.
New filling for scratch box
Ronja and Victor loves to scratch in cardboard and I often buy them scratch boards made of corrugated cardboard. The cats love them and when they are torn apart it's affordable to replace them with new ones. I buy different models for them so that it stays interesting. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, some a round and some are wavy. This one is a combination of a scratch board and a play box. You can put toys in there and the cats will try to get them out. We often use it together with a wand that I stick in and out of the holes while they try to catch it. Here's Ronja lying on an old and new version of this box.
Unfortunately the second one we got of these didn't last long as the scratch part broke in half. Maybe Ronja had one to many Dreamies and sat on it? We kept the box as Ronja liked to sit in it. After all - it's a box!
But then I got the idea to make a new scratch filling for the box by cutting up some extra boxes I had lying around.. I'm not very good with a ruler, so I don't even try making things precise unless it's absolutely necessary. And for this I decided to wing it and just make it by rule of thumb. It definitely will be a lot nicer looking, if you make it more precise than I did. But luckily my cats don't care about the finish. Victor immediately started to use it. All you need to make scratch filling for a box is a lot of cardboard (from other boxes perhaps), a knife and a pencil. Cut a piece that fits and you are happy with and use it as a template to make more. Just keep cutting these pieces till you got the box completely filled.
There's a lot of other ways to entertain your (indoor) cats. I can highly recommend introducing paper and plastic to play in and you can also make your own snacktivity toys.