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Repurposing cardboard into a cool modern cat scratcher.
I never owned a pet growing up. I never owned a pet as a young, single adult. No, it wasn’t until I met–and later married–a pet-lover (animal fanatic) that I found myself co-existing with a domestic animal. Today I say without shame, that I am a proud pet parent. I never imagined that I would be referring to myself as a “pet parent” and DEFINITELY never imagined that I would have begun to create custom furniture for him. Our tuxedo cat, Dart, is the proud owner of the mod cat scratcher in the tutorial below as well as a Soho custom cat sofa and tall rope tower scratcher. One of my favorite hobbies is building. Whether it is a piece of furniture for our home; refinishing an old piece of furniture; or even finding a way to re-purpose cardboard to create a cool piece of cat furniture from scratch (pun intended). After being inspired by a similar scratcher I had seen online and with Hastings being the “Greenest City” I decided it was only fitting to show all the cat lovers out there a fun, useful way to re-use excess cardboard.
Materials Needed
• Masking Tape
• Corrugated Cardboard
• Fabric
• Matte Board or similar material
• Straight Edge (Note: A matte cutter works great and greatly speeds up the process.)
• Utility Knife
• Pencil or Marker
• Spray Adhesive
• Wood Glue
• Catnip
You can find many of these materials at:
Big G Ace 3203 Osborne Dr W Hastings, NE. (402) 462-5181 Menards 3400 Osborne Drive East Hastings, NE (402) 462-7343 Walmart 3803 Osborne Drive West Hastings, NE (402) 462-6000 Sherry’s Cards & Gifts 620 West 2nd Street Hastings, NE (402) 463-5655Instructions
1. To begin creating this scratcher you are going to need to gather up a good amount of cardboard. The amount of cardboard you need will be determined by the size of scratcher you intend to construct. The grocery stores are good places to start looking for cardboard boxes.
2. Break down the cardboard boxes into flat sheets. Once you have done this you can start measuring out and cutting the strips you need to create the scratcher. I would suggest 2”to 4” wide strips. The length of the strips will be determined by the size of the cardboard. The longer the strips the better. See Fig. 1.
When marking out the strips, be sure to mark the cardboard so your cuts will be against the corrugation of the cardboard.
3. Ok. The strips of cardboard are now cut. You can begin rolling the first strip of card board into a tight coil. Once you have rolled the strip into a coil you will want to secure it with a piece of masking tape. See Fig 2.
4. At this point you have your first coil made. Now we are going to add to that coil by butting the next strip of cardboard to where the first coil of cardboard ended. Tape the starting end of cardboard to the previous coil and begin wrapping the cardboard around and around to keep increasing the size of the coil.
5. Repeat this process until the desired size of coil is achieved. This is going to be the scratching surface for your cat, so size appropriately.
6. Wrap the sides of the cardboard with a fabric of you choice. This just make the scratcher more aesthetically pleasing and ads a nice finishing touch. I used spray adhesive to attach my fabric and some furniture tacks.
7. Once the fabric is attached, cut a circle out of matte board about the same size as the scratcher surface and attach to the bottom with wood glue. Be generous. This is going to help hold the scratcher together.
8. Once the glue is dry flip the scratcher over and sprinkle catnip over the surface of the cardboard. This will encourage the use of the scratcher.
9. If you have hardwood floors I would suggest adding non-slip pads to the bottom of the scratcher.
That’s it! Your cat will be scratching in no time.
Do you have a pet-related project you’d like to share? Leave me a comment.
Tags: Cat, hobby, pet-lover, pets
About the author: Scott Miller
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