Catio, All Done! (At Least, Mostly So.)

by Nancy Gramm

4 Materials

$300

3 Months

Advanced

We've been working for several months on a catio so our indoor cats can get a tiny taste of outside every now and then.

There are plenty of tutorials online for building catios so I won't give one here, but I'll share pics of our steps as we went along.

This is our basic frame. We already had the cedar from a project the hub was working on before he was injured in an automobile accident last spring.

In this shot, we'd already added screen and hardware cloth on the sides, top and bottom. We'd also added a tin roof.

Here's the unit with double doors that will allow us to wash windows. 😜

An inside view. The hub needs to work up a window block/cat door but for now, on this 78° day in the Texas Hill country, it's lovely without it. (Blinds are out of whack from working on the project.)

As I said, for numerous reasons it's taken us several months to do this. Likely it wouldn't take most people that long.

I truly can't estimate the cost on this since we had most of the components already. It wasn't free; even with what we had on hand there was the cost of screening and hardware cloth and nuts and bolts, etc. I think my husband said the cedar originally cost around $300 so that's the price I'm putting on this. Please excuse the guesstimate, and pay no attention to it!

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3 of 5 questions

DIANNE on Jan 31, 2018

Have you thought about extending this along the whole side of this part of the House, it looks as if you can.
Sorry it's just me thinking like someone who was trapped herself behind four walls and couldn't get out.

1
Gid30034456 on Feb 01, 2018

Excuse my ignorance, but why can the cats not just go outside?😂

19
Kathy Bitzan on Feb 01, 2018

Did you put a litter box out there?

2

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2 of 64 comments

Nancy Gramm on May 12, 2021

So cool! It's been several years now since we built ours, and they still love it. It's the first place they go when I open the cat door every morning. All these years of having inside cats, I don't know how we did without one. Whoever came up with the idea is/was brilliant.

1 Reply
Marcy B. on Aug 25, 2022

I have a chihuahua she will love it. Thanks for the idea.

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