Hide-Away Cat House

Today is Hubs' birthday!  Or at least it was when I started writing this post.  I thought in celebration I could show off a little bit of his handiwork!

As previously mentioned, we have two annoying, entitled, anthropomorphic precious kitties in our family.  Unfortunately we've always been stumped with where to place their litter box.  There is no scarcely used bathroom, closet, or unused mudroom.  Thus wherever our cats are doing their business, it's more than likely going to be out in the ongoings of our house.  We talked about making a hidden litter box for months, and one day we just made it happen.

(Byyyyy the way, anytime I say 'we' in this post, you can be pretty sure that I actually mean 'he'.  I'm more the point and suggest type.)

We got this beaut of a dresser from Craigslist for $15.  Solid wood, just time worn and slightly bedraggled.  Most of the work that was done on this bad boy was repairing and solidifying the existing dresser.  If you had a somewhat newer piece of furniture, you could make a version of this in no time.

Here's what it looked like to begin with.  Actually this is even after a little bit of tlc.  Not gonna lie, when Hubs brought this home, I originally had my doubts...

But behold, the finished product!  He stripped, finished, and varnished the dresser, got new pulls from the hardware store, and unintentionally made it match the panels in our back room to a T!

So here's the dish.  The bottom drawer contains the cat box.  (For a box, we used a $3 dish tub from Dollar General.)  As time wore on, we realized the need for a mat on the bottom of the drawer, just in case of an 'overshoot'.  We used a piece of leftover vinyl from our kitchen.

The second drawer is actually flipped upside down and slid back into the spot to allow the cats head room.  Because Hubs thinks of everything, he bought an inexpensive motion sensor light much like this one, and mounted it up underneath the drawer.  No blackout bathroom for our spoiled rotten pooses.

The third drawer handily organizes litter cleaning paraphernalia, while the fourth and fifth have dishes, nip, canned food, etc. I dunno about you, but in our house having a place for everything is a huge commodity, so I'm thrilled to have a cat 'zone'.  Bonus points cause meds and other weird stuff is out of little hands' reach.

And up on top the kids have their water fountain (CatIt, a lot cheaper than vet visits) and dishes.  Poose is snuggled up in her throne cat tower, next to her bird watching window.  What a life, man.

This is the entry hole.  After staining and before varnishing, Hubs let me sharpie on some adorable cat ears and whiskers.  

Anyway, this is just what we did.  Maybe it will serve you as an inspiration or a starting point for a bigger project.  If you want to know any of the details on how this was accomplished, leave a comment and I'll ask the man who knows get right back to you!