Photo description: Gray tabby (15 pounds) sitting in front of two open cat carriers
Our two female cats had their vet visits, and since Thor the cat’s visit is coming up, I wanted to make sure he would fit in our current carriers. I was not hopeful, but I poked him in one and he was able to turn around and come out, which is one of the criteria to show the carrier is big enough. The crates are rated to 20 pounds, which has to be liquid cat measurements, because there is no humane way our stiff, dense, 20-pound dog would fit.
Photo description: Gray tabby inside, filling up a cat carrier, photo credit to my eldest
Later, my eldest was in the right position to snap a picture when Thor crawled into the carrier on his own, turned around, and laid down. Yay.
After replacing his collar four times, I found out how Thor the cat was breaking the buckle: with his teeth. Rather than risk a broken tooth, I am letting him go collarless. He is chipped, so if he freaks and escapes, there is that. He looked so handsome with his black collar, sigh.
Photo description: gray tabby with white face and chest laying on a gray fuzzy blanket with a black collar laying on the blanket in front of him.
I’m sure the collar was interfering in his regular baths. He is a very fastidious cat.
Photo description: mostly black calico cat laying on white fabric
I draped some white fabric over my workbench to take some photos and the next thing I know it had sprouted a cat. The particular cat that chose the spot is Izzy, who has the most black hairs of all our cats. There must be some universal law of attraction.
As an aside, it doesn’t matter what color I wear, there is a cat on the property that has contrasting fur.
Photo description: gray tabby cat laying on a bag of metallic plastic easter eggs on the bed, folded bits of paper with jokes in the foreground.
I made up slips of paper with jokes on them to stuff in easter eggs. I used the OpenDyslexic font, which is brilliantly designed to visually weight down the letters and make each shape unique. Thor the cat decided that laying on the eggs was a comfy place to watch me work and take a bat at the occasional egg.
When we first moved to our house, there was a large wood workbench on the back porch, salvaged from an old workshop. Since it had been left out in the elements, many of the parts were warped and cracked. I disassembled the bench and reused the parts for projects around the house. One of those projects was a cat food cabinet made from two drawers and part of the workbench top. I turned the drawers sideways to make the sides of the cabinet, put on a top with back splash, and made a door with hinges. The wood I used for the door had a large split, which I reinforced with braces on the back and an old leather belt nailed to the front.
Photo description: Thor the gray tabby standing on the top of the recycled cat food cabinet.Photo description: the inside of the cat food cabinet showing how the original drawers were repurposed.
The problem with the wood top is that it was not smooth, so was hard to clean. To fix this, I added laminate adhesive tiles to the top, then gave the rest of the wood a boost with a rub down with Howard’s Feed-n-Wax.
Photo description: laminate tile added to the top of the recycled cat food cabinet, also showing the melamine shelf above the cabinet with Izzy the cat eating crunchies, and on the floor, Missy the dog looking for fall out.
It took a bit of time for the cats to figure out that the new surface was stable, and Thor would rather his wet food bowl be put elsewhere, but the surface is so much easier to clean now.
Critters and Craft 