My indoor cat has been absolutely tearing up the side of our living room sofa with his claws, so I finally decided to build a massive custom cat house and multi level climbing playground tower to save my furniture. I bought a sheet of heavy plywood, a couple of thick carpet remnants, and a massive roll of sisal rope, thinking it would be a quick case of throwing some boxes together. What a tedious, frustrating project. Trying to wrap thick rope tightly around wooden posts by yourself takes way too much hand strength.
The absolute worst part was wrapping the main vertical scratcher posts with the sisal rope. You have to lay down a thick bead of heavy duty construction adhesive onto the wood and then tightly wind the rough rope coil by coil, holding the tension with your bare hands so the lines don’t unravel and slip down. The sticky glue kept bleeding straight through the hemp fibers and getting all over my knuckles, and the rough rope texture practically sandpapered the skin right off my fingers within ten minutes.
Then came the real headache of getting the carpet remnants to wrap cleanly around the interior walls of the little wooden cat house box. Trying to use a heavy upholstery staple gun inside a cramped, dark plywood cubbyhole while keeping the thick fabric from bunching up at the corners was an absolute geometric nightmare. I accidentally jammed a heavy steel staple right into my thumb on the first corner block, which completely ruined my focus and made a giant mess of the layout.
The multi-level cat tree is completely bolted together now and the heavy plywood base tracking keeps the whole tower from wobbling when the cat jumps onto the upper deck platform. The sisal rope coils are completely solid against the support posts and the carpeted nesting box sits perfectly level against the wall studs. The cat has already crawled inside the lower tunnel to sleep, so the indoor playground setup functions fine now.