Tree

do you think Black Scrooge likes climbing?
we thought so. maybe because of where we found him one evening... he stood on those boxes for a few seconds, with the deer-caught-in-headlights look on his face, trying to figure out whether he's in trouble or not. we thought he would be more comfortable on a specially designed cat-furniture.
"we need to build them some cat tree."
"yea, maybe we can do it over the weekend at my parents' house!"
..."here are some nice examples, what do you think?"
"i like the last one."
"i like the first one"
"hmm... we could look for branches, only that the ground is covered with all that snow... and plus, it will crumble and leave crap all over our carpet.."

here's the plan:


it didn't take much to "convince" DadK to take part in the project.
Mom&DadK's basement proved to be a great source of... anything!
We found some carpet scraps, 2-by-4s, ply wood, and a whole lot of tools.


this is ben, using the sander on the main post (he's so incredibly fast, and looks like a blur in the picture) and DadK supervising.


And here, they are producing some important parts (cleats???) that will eventually make the tree level and stable (they are really just small wooden triangles):


This is Roy, making sure we follow the plan. we actually used him for size, as an upper limit on any future size/weight the scroogim can get to ;)


After getting all the parts back home, we assembled them according to plan. Of course we had to try and err a bit, unscrew and rescrew, break a drill bit, and fight black scrooge off of Ben's back (he seemed to like ben's position, bending over like that while using the screw driver...). Gray scrooge was ready to jump on the top shelf before anything was even assembled, and we just had it standing there for size...

We had to eyeball a bunch, since we don't have a level, and rely on the triangle thingies to be perfectly angled, and the result is (according to the quality control committee, aka Black and Gray Scrooge) -- perfect.

We still need to work on stability (right now the heavy tool bag is standing on the base), but seems like we planned it just right. the center of weight is always above the base, preventing it from tipping over, and the extra long screws we got do the job of keeping it in one piece. We also still need to cover the post with scratching carpet and scratching rope... we were too tired to do that when we finally finished. The scroogeim immediately climbed up, and we are now left with zero places that they cannot reach. this was not part of the plan. we need to get a shelf now.

Looks like they like it up there!