Tag Archives: Cat Room
Our cat, Rini has arrived
We have decided to get a British Short Hair girl, and we have planned for long time. We have done a lot of research by reading books and searching on the Internet. Finally, we have prepared a “safe room” (told by many books) for the kitten for her to adapt to the new environment. Indeed, Rini is between a kitten and a teenager, she is around 5 months old.
Cat Napper Window Bed and Acrylic Protection
We had a good deal in Montreal and bought a Cat Napper window bed, so that Rini can watch the birds when bored. To prevent her from damaging the glass and windows stripping, I decided to installed an acrylic panel. I cut to fit the window perfectly and taped it securely. As you can see, you don’t even know there is an acrylic panel installed, it just looks like glass.
Closet Maid turned into Cat Step
If you have read my blog article “Walk-in closet now becomes cat’s room” you knew that we have re-used closet maid and made it into cat’s playground. Well, it’s not enough because the white board doesn’t have grip for the cat. So, I used my left over carpet from my car audio project, and wrapped the white board. Ideally, I should have used real carpet.
Ventilation Problem: Add a fan “Cyclone Booster Fan Plus”
Since it’s spring time and it’s very hot in the room. However, it’s not hot to the point that we need to turn on the air conditioner yet. In order to bring fresh air to the kitten room, my solution is to add “Cyclone Booster Fan Plus” from Home Depot. This thing beats the shit out of “Duct Demon”, I have used Duct Demon and it was waste of money. This Cyclone Booster fan is 10 times stronger than duct demon despite the packing and color looks like old fashion crap (they seriously need some work done in marketing), but I strongly recommend Cyclone.
Tips: To protect all the cables from being destroyed by the kitten, I wrapped it with the plastic cable wrap that can be bought from automotive or car audio stores.
Other High Tech devices in Cat Room
- Petmate Deluxe Fresh Flow water fountain
- Linksys Wireless-G Internet Home Monitoring Camera WVC54GCA
- Black/White TV and Radio
- ScoopFree Ultra Automatic self-cleaning litter box (not shown)
- Petmate Automatic Pet Feeder (not shown)
I have Geovision for serious security in our house, but since I don’t want to wire the cat room, I decided to go with wireless. I bought this Linksys wireless cam (it’s not cheap), but I prefer Geovision solution way better since I can choose whatever camera I like. Linksys cam setup was easy, I didn’t even use the CD provided. It comes with build-in web server, however the problems are:
1. No night vision for B/W with infrared
2. Wireless is so slow and unstable with my G-router, even router is next door (RJ45 wired is fast thought). I had to spend another $100 to buy a wide range N-router to solve the problem
3. Power cable is too short
4. The unit generates too much heat (I turn it on 24/7)
5. Camera size is huge and cannot be easily hidden like pin-hole cam, Linksys could have separated the two components, I doubt they will do it
6. It is not weather proof like the other surveillance cameras I had
At the breeder’s place
We arrived at the breeder’s place, and there were a lot of cats. This was the 2nd visit and we got a lot of valuable advices from the breeder. Since the breeder is specialize in British Short Hair, there were many of them and they all look alike.
Rini has arrived
We brought Rini home on Sunday night May 24, 2008. Since she was new to the environment, she was pretty stressful as expected. She meowed a lot on the first night. Deb and I took a day off on the following day. Now, she got settled down after several days. Here are some photos:
How do we come up with the name, Rini?
Deb and I got married on the Island “Santorini” in Greece, so we decided to related this special event with our first cat.
Walk-in closet now becomes cat’s room
Debbie’s walk-in closet now becomes cat’s room as we have decided to buy a British Short Hair. Spoiled kitten has her dedicated room. With our limited space in our house, Deb is willing to give up her walk-in closet. So, where is Deb going to store her clothes? The solution is “IKEA PAX”.
IKEA PAX Installation
We bought 3 sets of PAX with doors, they are EXTREMELY heavy. It took me 2-3 days to assemble everything.
My Tips:
1. Use butterfly drywall toggle to fasten PAX to the wall prevent from tipping over, it holds 80 lb.
2. When installing the glass door, put some cardboard underneath
3. ONE PERSON installation the glass door? no problem, use a lot of cardboard to level the holes on the PAX, I also use a pair of slippers to add friction which prevents the door from sliding
Here is Deb’s new closet in the master bedroom:
IKEA PAX design flaw: Whenever Closet A’s right door + Closet B’s left door are opened are the same time, it has serious problem. If you force it to open, I think the door will break. Stupid IKEA designer didn’t think about this. Well, I checked the kitchen cabinet, there was not problem. It seems like a design flaw, well, the workaround is to be extra careful.
Cat Room (Before and After): Part of the closetmaid hardware can be re-used for cat climbing steps, so I went to Home depot to cut some boards in white color ($7 CAD each and free cut, so it’s not too bad). Now it looks good.
