Climbing the Walls

There is a remote possibility that being retired gives me way too much time to get ideas from Pinterest. However, all the Pinterest ideas I have tried out have met with at least some degree of success. So it should be no surprise to you that I eventually would decide to try making climbing shelves for a certain cat. Who likes to climb where he’s not supposed to.

You pretty much get the picture! It dawned on me that maybe if he had his own shelves to climb on, he may not be so interested in all the other things he’s not supposed to do.

So I started looking on Pinterest to see what other people had done. As usual, I said to myself, “I could do that!” I started studying up on different types of shelves, and how to install them. I decided on a combination of crates and floating shelves.

The first thing I had to do was switch the computer to my desk and put the items on my desk over to the computer desk. That way I would have more room to work, plus it would just look better. Of course I had plenty of help…

Then I needed to paint the crates. I really liked the way they came out. As an added bonus, the paint looked just like melted chocolate! Which is always a plus.

The crates were pretty easy to nail up. The one on the bookshelf is nailed to the wall on the side and there is a tiny nail in the bottom holding it to the shelf as well. The floating shelves proved to be more of a challenge.

The shelves came with these huge screws (above left), and I was having a really hard time getting them to screw in with my regular screwdriver. I knew there was a drill in the garage that could be used as an electric screwdriver, so that was plan B. It involved A) finding it and its charger in the garage, B) finding the drill bits, and C) finding Foster, who takes every opportunity to go into the garage and then doesn’t want to come out.

For floating shelves you have to install these posts first. Even with the electric drill/screwdriver, nothing I could do would make the screws go in. Then it dawned on me that I was basically trying to put screws into solid plaster, and I thought, why wouldn’t nails work just as well? So that’s what I did, and they worked fine. I know it looks messy, and I had to put spackle in the holes I had made trying to put the screws in, but I figured it could just act as glue for the nails when it dried.

The finished product! Now to get Foster to realize that here was a shelf he was allowed to climb up on…

My first thought was to put Panda up there and see what he would do. (Foster, not Panda.)

I actually had to lure him up there with his fishing pole seaweed toy. It worked though…then I had to worry about if he would try to jump from the shelf all the way to the floor. He jumped down to the bookshelf, then to the desk, and then the chair before landing on the floor, so I was fine with that. The next day I put a nail up there with a mouse toy on an elastic string. Foster went up immediately and began to play with the mouse.

But once he got the mouse off the nail, he was more interested in the nail…

Finally he realized the mouse was still up there and promptly pushed it down onto the floor. It didn’t look like he had a lot of room to turn around up there, and I didn’t want him to fall, so I decided to put up another floating shelf. Now that I had figured out the part about the nails, it should be lots easier, I thought.

Okay, kids, don’t try this at home! I hadn’t counted on having help with this part. Have you ever tried taking a picture of your hand holding a ruler while standing on a chair with a cat trying to play with your fingers at the same time? (No, Mom, I didn’t really do that…LOL)