Author: Joe

Cat tree

My two cats are rather hard on cat furniture. The small cat tree I have is missing most of the carpet at the top of the posts that hold up the tube so I’ve had to lay it down so the cats will sharpen their claws on that instead of on the carpet on the stairs (at least that was the goal). The scratching post I have (that Dash almost never uses) I had to re-wrap in sisal rope, and apparently it’s not as good as the old rope so neither cat used it for weeks. I think the scent of the new rope is finally wearing off since I’ve seen Talore scratch at it a few times, but she still picks at the stairs sometimes.

My sister proposed boiling catnip leaves to make tea and seeing if soaking stuff in that makes it attractive to the cats, but I haven’t tried that yet. Shaking some catnip on the scratching post was enough to get Talore to rub on it.

A month or two ago I decided I’d just get them a new cat tree – one big enough they could both have a perch and they could use for scratching. Then I went to the store and discovered that I’d be paying nearly $200 for a cat tree that didn’t seem all that big.

I figured I could build a more interesting cat tree myself, so when I had family in town for Thanksgiving we did some planning and got wood. The original concept called for a 10+ foot tall tower reaching from downstairs to the loft railing so the cats could climb it to get upstairs. That seemed like it would be a bit unstable (and out of sight of my desk, so they wouldn’t be on it much while I’m at home at my desk). We also considered just getting shelves, wrapping them in carpet, and mounting them staggered so the cats could jump between them to go up, but that didn’t seem all that exciting (and Dash likes being in boxes more than having a high vantage point).

After looking at cat trees online I settled on a stand-alone tree that will go between my reading lamp and the shelves in the corner of the loft. I insisted it needs to fit through doorways without disassembly, and we decided on a two foot by three foot base and a four foot tall frame (probably with a box and platform on top so it’ll be around five feet tall).

That’s all we had to go with when we went to the lumber yard, so we figured we’d get wood for the frame, plywood for floors, carpet to cover it with, and enough fasteners to make it go together. We discovered that Home Depot has bundles of banister supports, which are sanded square posts (with rounded edges), and come in lengths of three and four feet. We also found plywood of various thicknesses sold in two foot by four foot rectangles with one side sanded smooth. We chose the thickest carpet they had in stock (the really expensive carpet has to be ordered) and got a roll two feet wide.

As it stands now, rather than spending a bit under $200 on a cat tree I’ve now spent around $200 on materials that hopefully will turn into a cat tree soon.

I also got a staple gun (for securing the carpet) and the last few things my tablesaw needed to get it going: bolts to mount it to the stand my dad built last time he was here, the belt to connect the motor to the blade, and a surge protector with a switch (temporary fix since the motor doesn’t have a switch). I had to reverse the direction the motor turns, which turned out to be pretty easy once I spotted the plate on the end that comes off (it was fastened with the bolts that hold the case together, at first glance it didn’t look like a separate piece), but now I finally have the tablesaw that’s been in my garage for the last year in a useable state.

While my family was here I got the basic frame together, then I cut the plywood for the bottom platform after they left. Here’s what I had at the end of last weekend:

I also had a piece of plywood on the end of the top by the lamp so I could turn the lamp on and let Talore sleep in a heated spot that’s not my lap. I’m not certain it was all that warm even with the reading lamp arm swung over the platform, but Talore was quite content to stay there when I put her on the platform. Both cats could walk along the beam on the side of the frame to get to the platform, though Dash always paused for a bit before stepping out onto the narrow beam where he actually had to balance.

This weekend I didn’t spend much time actually working on it, but I did finally draw up a vague plan of how I’m going to arrange platforms. I don’t have it planned exactly, but I know what I’m doing with the upper-middle level and I have an idea of what I’ll do for the bottom levels so I added some middle framing. That finished all the holes I needed in the floor on the bottom, so I fastened that piece of plywood down. This is what it looks like now:

The box in the middle platform isn’t very well supported but Dash managed to get in to check it out pretty quickly. I think he didn’t appreciate how much the cardboard flexed when he wasn’t actually standing over the plywood that’s holding it up: he didn’t stay in it for long.

Flash Flood Warning

It’s expected that heavy rains on the burn scar will cause flooding since there’s no vegetation to slow the water down. I live nowhere near where the fire was so it’s probably good that the heavy rain on Sunday was around my house instead of in the mountains, but there was still cause for concern here.

This is the stormwater channel normally (little to no rain):

This was Sunday afternoon:

The water actually was up into the edge of the parking lot down the hill, but I couldn’t see that from my door to get a good picture and it was still raining.

This is what happened just downstream on the channel that goes behind my house:

That last picture sure makes me glad that I live back from the channel a bit, though that’s not obvious since it’s all downhill so you don’t see much ground between where I took the picture and the channel.

Waldo Canyon Fire

Last Saturday a fire started near Colorado Springs. I first heard about it on the airplane back from vacation on Sunday night, but all day Monday it didn’t seem all that close:

The picture (like most of the following ones) was taken through the window at work, so you can see reflection of the metal ring around my phones camera as well as possibly some blurry shapes reflected.

There were C130s out dropping slurry starting on Monday, but we only saw them flying around since we didn’t have a direct view of anything relevant at that point. Tuesday morning I actually got to see the ends of a slurry drop on the far side of the ridge that’s in the first picture, but I wasn’t quick enough and my phone camera doesn’t have the zoom to have made it visible in a picture anyways.

Tuesday afternoon the wind picked up to gusts of 65 MPH blowing towards Colorado Springs. A few people were listening to the radio scanner online and someone announced that they’d seen fire on the ridge. In the short time it took for us to get to the window to look we could already see huge flames well down the slope. This picture was taken a just few minutes later (from outside this time):

Everything was quickly obscured by smoke since the wind was blowing it toward us, but about ten minutes later flames broke out in sight farther north:

The picture didn’t really turn out, but there were flames visible from where we were at the bottom of the column of black smoke.

Just another couple minutes later I finally got a shot where the flames are visible in the picture (bottom left edge of the smoke – faint but you can see the glow of it without even looking at the full sized image):

Shortly after that our view was completely blocked by a low cloud of dense smoke. I took a picture but it really doesn’t do it justice. Basically the sky was significantly darkened and we completely lost sight of the ridge where the fire came over, but looking north it was clear and sunny.

Tuesday night listening to the scanner it was clear that the fire was actually down in neighborhoods burning houses, so I registered my phone/address with the local 911 system in case they started making evacuation calls for my area and packed some small stuff in my car.

By Wednesday morning the fire wasn’t really moving my direction, but it sounded like there were still structure fires going. For a while late afternoon the wind was mostly calm and all we could see was smoke:

Thursday and Friday the weather was good for fire fighting and they made a lot of progress containing it, but it’s still expected to burn for about another two weeks according to the last estimate I saw.

News sources:
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Fire/evacuation map