We bought an amazing shelf for $15 and turned it into “Catopia” for our three kitties. We bought 8 pieces of scratchboard, 3 pieces of carpet remnants, 7 dust mop heads, a brush head for a broom, and a mop head from the Dollar Tree. I used E6000 glue for this project and I went through 1 large tube at $3. In total – $38 for an amazing sturdy piece of cat furniture.

Tools:

Protractor

Jigsaw

Staple gun

Rotary tool

Serrated knife

I started by gluing the scratchboard pieces with E6000 to the long side of the shelf. I reccomend doing this a piece at a time, letting it dry several minutes between each piece (if you make a Catopia someday). After it dried, I trimmed the extra off with a serrated knife.

Then I used the protractor to draw circles on the shelves – this part was easy! I used a Sharpie to darken the lines and then my husband and I used the dremel to make holes for the jigsaw to start in. He cut out the holes for me with the jigsaw. This was challenging because of the lack of space near the walls of the shelf.

Together we figured out where to put the other features. The glue was not holding the mophead, so I undid the yarn from that. We used a staple gun to attach it to the bottom of a shelf where it hangs down.

I used the staple gun to affix the carpet pieces. I love the paw prints in the front and the cute mini Hello mat at the bottom! My kitties literally had a welcome mat put out for them.

I sprayed it with catnip spray and baited it with treats. We are also putting them in it and petting them to let them know it’s ok to be in.