Money Crashers: Subscription services and vet bills

Two more of my Money Crashers articles came out this weekend. The first is an overview of Walmart's new subscription service, Walmart+, which it rolled out this month to compete with Amazon's hugely popular Prime delivery service. (As of December 2018, it had 101 million members, nearly 1 out of every 3 people in the entire country — and that was before COVID.) However, just like Prime when it first got started, Walmart+ doesn't currently offer a lot of features; it's pretty much free shipping and nothing else, and even that's only available for orders over $35, which you already get on Amazon without a Prime membership. Walmart+ delivery can be faster sometimes, and you get a few other perks, like faster checkout in Walmart stores. But is it really worth $98 a year?

My new article compares the two services head-to-head, and, no surprise, Amazon Prime is the better deal for most shoppers. But there are a few exceptions.

Walmart+ vs. Amazon Prime – Delivery, Shopping & Entertainment Benefits

The second article is on a completely different topic: the high cost of veterinary care for your pets, and ways to keep it under control. As of 2016, dog owners were paying an average of $1,518 a year for vet visits, and cat owners were paying $972. (Cats have cheaper problems.) However, there are several ways to reduce the cost if you know how. Good preventive care can reduce the number of vet visits you make, and shopping around for providers and medications can reduce the cost of each visit. And for those bills you can't avoid, there are several programs that can pick up some of the cost, from pet insurance to charity aid.

17 Ways to Get Help with Vet Bills and Lower Veterinary Care Costs

Gardening hits and misses

As I've observed before, sometimes our ecofrugal life seems like a series of little ups and downs. For each thing that goes unexpectedly wrong due to some combination of bad luck and bad planning, another goes unexpectedly right. So, instead of sharing one big story this week, I decided to talk about a bunch of these little hits and misses — the warp and weft of the ecofrugal life. And, as luck would have it, all of them involve plants.

Miss: A vegetable do-over

We'll start with our biggest miss this week. Remember all those seedlings we put in last weekend? Well, for some reason that we still aren't quite sure of, they didn't fare well at all. Brian had done his best to harden them off (expose them to outdoor light and temperature) over the week or so before planting them, but once they were actually in the ground, their leaves started to turn pale and dry — a sure sign of sunscald. Our seedlings have experienced a touch of this in past years, but never to such a degree. Brian could only guess that the problem was that the weather before planting was mostly cloudy, while the week after was particularly sunny. On top of this, we had a couple of unseasonably cold nights (though no actual frost) that probably didn't do our tender pepper plants any good.

Fortunately, Brian always starts twice as many seeds of each type as we actually need so that we'll have backup plants for situations like this. So we spent a big chunk of yesterday morning replacing all the pepper plants, as well as one of the new Opalka tomatoes, with their backups. The other plants, though not as healthy as usual, looked stronger than the seedlings that had been confined to little tubes all week, so we left them in place. Brian added little cages of chicken wire over the new peppers to protect them from critters (since one of the four lost plants had been bitten off rather than merely wilted) and to filter the sunlight that reaches them until they're a little bigger.

Meanwhile, Brian is holding on to all the remaining extra seedlings, rather than giving them away as we usually do (which would be a challenge anyway on account of social distancing). That way, if the new Opalka tomato doesn't make it either, we can still replace it with a different variety. He's dug out a new bed for them all next to the house, which he's calling "the burn ward."

Hit: Potato plants 

However, there's one crop in the garden that's looking incredibly robust: our new potato plants. The buckets are now full to the very top, with a layer of mulch on top of the dirt, and the plants are spilling out in a burst of exuberantly green foliage. I don't know whether the health of the plants is any indicator of how many actual potatoes we can hope to get off them, but it's quite encouraging to look at.

Hit: Asparagus

Another crop that's producing well is the asparagus. After a late start, it's now producing in abundance. We've already eaten about a pound and a half of it, and we've harvested this much more just in the past week. We've had so many meals featuring asparagus that Brian actually asked me if I could find some new asparagus recipes, since we were already getting a little tired of the ones we had. So I obligingly dug out an asparagus and mushroom pasta recipe that had been sitting for years in our recipe file, which you'll most likely be seeing later as our Recipe of the Month for May.

Miss: An ill-fated plant

In order to start the seeds for my new flower bed this year, we had to clear a larger space for seedlings than usual in our south-facing guest room window. Thus, the houseplant that normally lives there, a cat-friendly aluminum plant, had to be moved to a downstairs window for the duration. I was sorry to displace it, because the plant itself was so handsome and healthy-looking, and it was also in a really neat-looking pot from Ten Thousand Villages: vaguely dodecahedral in shape and made of unglazed terra cotta.

But well before the seedlings were ready to plant, it became clear that neither the plant nor its pot was doing at all well in its new home. Not only was its foliage drooping, no matter how much water it got, but the outer surface of the clay pot was starting to come off in big flakes. Once we had room for it again, I brought the pot back upstairs, but the plant's condition didn't seem to improve. Large clumps of it were simply dead, and when I tried to remove those clumps, pieces of the little healthy foliage remaining came off with them. Plus, the pot was still a mess, and we feared that eventually it would fall apart altogether.

So, yesterday while on a walk, I popped into the Rite Aid and picked up a new pot for the aluminum plant (marked down to $5, as spring is nearly over). But when Brian tried to transfer what was left of the plant to the new pot, he got a nasty shock: None of the healthy-looking foliage that was left on the plant was actually connected to the soil at all. No wonder it wasn't looking well.

We pulled off what pieces of the plant we could salvage and put them in water to see if we can get any of them to take root, but we aren't pinning our hopes on it. The good news is that, after a little bit of work, Brian was able to remove most of the damaged parts of the clay pot and found that the structure of it was still intact — so, for the time being, he's planted two leftover Johnny Jump-Up seedlings from our flowerbed in it. Sources list these as only "mildly toxic" to cats, and our cats have never been in the habit of nibbling on the aluminum plant when we had it in the guest room, so we're hoping if we put the violas in the same place, they and the cats will be able to coexist.

Hit: Rose is arose

Although we're currently down one houseplant, we're certainly not lacking for fresh flowers. Our rosebush, after weeks of teasing us with buds that looked almost ready to bloom, has finally burst into full, riotous blossom. Just look at these beauties! We've got one in our cat-safe vase now, and if these keeps up, we may soon be harvesting whole bunches of them to display in all our rooms.

Our aluminum plant may not survive, and perhaps this year's tomato crop won't be everything we'd hoped for. But between this abundance of beautiful blooms and the ten pounds of flour we were fortunate enough to find at the supermarket yesterday (despite shortages), we'll have both bread and roses — everything you really need for a fulfilling ecofrugal life.

Money Crashers: 17 Benefits of Having a Dog

My latest Money Crashers article is a companion piece to my last one on the costs of owning a dog. Having examined the costs, it was only fair to examine the benefits as well — and there are lots of them, with actual scientific studies to back them up. Among other things, the piece discusses how having a dog in the home can:

• Get you to exercise more
• Lower your blood pressure
• Reduce your stress levels
• Improve self-esteem
• Help you make new friends
• Strengthen existing relationships
• Protect you from burglary
• Teach responsibility to kids

Learning all this wasn't enough to convince me that it's time for us to adopt a dog, especially since some of the studies suggest our two kitties can provide many of the same benefits. But it has made me look more positively on the idea of getting one some time down the road, perhaps after Brian has retired (or at least reduced work hours) and can take a bigger role in its day-to-day care.

17 Benefits of Having / Owning a Dog – Can It Save You Money & Health?

Money Crashers: How Much Does a Dog Really Cost?

Although Brian and I both grew up with dogs in our homes, we've never had a dog of our own. From time to time we've thought about adopting one, but we keep concluding that we're not ready for the commitment involved. Because there’s no way around it, a dog is more work than a cat. It needs more space, and it has to be let outside or taken for walks instead of just using a box to do its business. And whenever we went on a trip, we’d have to put the dog in a kennel, instead of just having someone come in every day or two to tend to it, like we do with the cats. It’s a responsibility we just don’t feel ready to take on right now.

When we think about getting a dog, it's the time commitment that deters us more than the financial cost. But that's not trivial, either. According to the 2017-2018 National Pet Owners Survey conducted by the American Pet Products Association (APPA), the average dog owner spends $2,883 a year on their pet. That cost includes $235 a year for food, $109 for grooming, $322 for kennel boarding, $257 for routine vet visits, and over $1,000 for other veterinary care — sick visits, emergency care, medications, and surgeries.

However, these costs are only averages. In some areas, it's possible to spend significantly less without any risk to your dog's health or happiness. At the same time, there are other areas in which it definitely doesn't make sense to cut corners. The trick is knowing where to save and where to splurge.

That's what my latest Money Crashers article is all about. I go into the costs of owning a dog, then examine ways to cut these costs where appropriate (like grooming and training). I also talk about the areas where it often makes sense to spend more (like food and veterinary care), and about ways to keep these expenses under control without harming your pet. I hope it will come in handy for all the dog owners and potential dog owners out there — and someday for me and Brian, perhaps when we've retired and have more time to spare.

How Much Does a Dog Really Cost? – Where to Save & Where to Splurge

IKEA hack: Cat-safe vase 3.0

One of the first things we had to do after we got our two rambunctious kitties in 2015 was figure out a way to protect our flowers from them. It didn't take us long to figure out that it wasn't enough for the vase to be stable enough to keep the cats from knocking it over; it also had to physically block off their access to the flowers, since anything they could reach would get pulled out and turned into a cat toy/snack. Even if we limited ourselves strictly to cat-safe flowers that wouldn't hurt the kitties if they chose to chew on them, it would kind of defeat the purpose of displaying flowers to make the kitchen look nice if they instead ended up scattered all over the floor.

Our first attempt at a cat-safe vase was a glass canning jar inverted over top of a smaller jar. This experiment showed us that a fully enclosed container wouldn't really work, because water condensed all over the inside and made it nearly impossible to see the flowers underneath. We needed something with a bit of ventilation to allow the flowers to breathe.

Our next attempt, our cat-safe vase 1.0, was a repurposed glass candle chimney from our local thrift shop. We just inverted it over top of a small glass of wildflowers, keeping them out of reach of curious paws while still allowing us to see them (sort of). This arrangement wasn't ideal, since it severely limited the size of the flower bouquet that would fit underneath, but it worked reasonably well for about a year.

Then, after what seemed like a fairly minor tap against a candlestick, the glass shade completely broke. We couldn't find another, so Brian came up with a DIY cat-safe vase using a plain glass vase and a wooden stand with holes that allowed air to circulate from below. This, once again, worked tolerably well, but it still wasn't ideal. For one thing, having the vase inverted over the top tended to cramp the flower arrangements inside, squashing any artistically draped leaves or blossoms against the side of the glass. It was tricky to load and unload it properly, getting the glass centered in exactly the right spot so the vase could fit over top without crushing the flowers. And although it theoretically allowed for some air movement, the inside of the vase still had a tendency to mist up—and after a bunch of flowers had been in there for a week or so, mold would start to form along their foliage. This required us to change the flowers quite a bit more often than we had to when we were using a simple, open vase.

Then, last week, we accompanied Brian's sister's family on a trip to the Indianapolis IKEA and spotted this nifty SINNESRO lantern. It's meant to keep a candle protected from the wind outdoors, but it occurred to me that it could just as easily protect a small vase of flowers from our inquisitive felines. And since it was designed to provide enough air to keep a candle flame burning, we figured it ought to do a reasonably good job of allowing air to circulate around our flowers. At any rate, for eight bucks, we thought it was worth a try. Even if it didn't work, we could still use the lantern for its intended purpose, either indoors or out on our patio.

As soon as we got home from Indiana, we set up the new the lantern on our kitchen table. Since there are no flowers blooming at this time of year, we just put a little sprig of evergreens in a cup and tucked it inside as a proof of concept.

Right away, it was clear that this lantern had a couple of advantages over the previous cat-safe vase. For one, it was much easier to load and unload, since you could tuck the glass of flowers right inside the glass enclosure instead of having to carefully lower the vase down over top of it. It was also a lot more polished-looking than our makeshift vase with its wooden stand. (Brian had sanded the piece down a little bit to smooth it out and covered over the screws with wood putty, but it was still pretty obvious that it had been cobbled together from plywood scraps.)

So far, the new lantern-vase shows no tendency to fog up inside, but in this extra-cold, dry weather, we can't necessarily read too much into that. We'll have to give it a few days to see whether the greenery inside stays clean and free of mildew, but for now, I'm liking this arrangement very much. And we still have our old cat-safe vase 2.0 available if we decide we want to display some flowers in another location.

So for anyone out there who is looking for a way to keep flowers and cats in the same house, I'd say this ultra-simple IKEA hack is the easiest way to make it work. If you don't happen to have an IKEA store in your neck of the woods, pretty much any candle lantern intended for outdoor use should do just as well, though you might have to pay a bit more for it. A quick online search just turned up several options priced around $12 at stores like Pier 1 and Quick Candles; you can almost surely find something to fit both your taste and your budget.

Household Hacks: Even easier DIY cat toy

So, remember how a couple of weeks ago I said I had come up with the world's easiest DIY cat toy?

Well, I spoke too soon. Brian has come up with another toy that is also made of reused materials and is even simpler than the my paper twists. Plus, the cats are even more enthusiastic about it. The only catch is, to get the materials for it, you have to consume five heads of garlic.

At our house, this is no problem. Garlic is a staple for us, and so we routinely buy several heads at a time. They come bundled up together in a little mesh bag, like this. Brian thought these little bags looked like they might be useful for something, so he took to saving them. He'd just roll them up into little balls like this, rather resembling a jellyfish, and toss them in a larger mesh bag (the kind onions come in) for storage.

At some point, it occurred to him that these little balls were the sort of thing our cats might like to play with. They were lightweight and slightly irregular in shape, so when you tossed them, they'd bounce and roll in unpredictable ways—which seems to be the best way to hold the cats' interest. But he hesitated to give them one, because he thought they were so small the cats might somehow manage to swallow them.

Recently, however, we picked up a bag of garlic that was much larger than the stuff we usually buy. It wasn't quite as jumbo-sized as the stuff they call elephant garlic, but it was definitely bigger than average. And consequently, it came in a bigger bag. So Brian decided this bag made a large enough ball that we could safely give it to the cats and see how they reacted.

The answer, as it turns out, was "with great enthusiasm." If you toss this mesh ball for them, they will chase after it even more eagerly than they do the paper toys. They especially love when it goes rolling in a vaguely off-kilter path down the hall, so they can go bounding after it. The best part is that when they catch up to it and snatch at it, the mesh often catches on their claws, causing them to snake them until it comes free—which, of course, sends it flying off again, so they can chase it all over. So all we have to do is toss this toy once, and they will amuse themselves with it for—well, not for hours on end, but at least for several minutes.

I tried to get a few pictures of the cats playing with this toy, but unfortunately, our cats just love the camera. As soon as it comes out, they become far more interested in that than they were in whatever they were doing, and so all you can get is pictures of them staring into the camera and trying to bite it. So you'll just have to take my word for it: they love this thing.

Better still, after observing how our cats play with this extra-large garlic-bag ball, Brian has concluded that probably there would be no harm in letting them play with the smaller ones, as well. So once they manage to lose this toy or chew it to pieces (they've already pulled a couple of small strings loose), we have several more to replace it.

And that also means that if you want to try this toy on your cats, you don't necessarily have to seek out an unusually large bag of garlic to make it. Just buy a regular bag of whatever size your supermarket carries, eat all the garlic, and roll up the bag like this: start by turning up one end, then roll it over a second time, and just keep rolling until you've got the little jellyfish shape shown above. Then send it skittering down the hall, and watch your kitties pounce.

Household Hacks: The world's easiest DIY cat toy

Our two cats are a bit picky about toys. We've tried all sorts of mice sold at the big pet superstores, and the only one they ever showed any partiality for was a little stuffed critter covered in black-and-white spotted fabric. Winnie loved that little mouse, but she kept batting him under doors and furniture where we'd have to retrieve him, and at some point he got completely lost. And, of course, the store no longer carried any like him, so we've never been able to find a good replacement.

The only other pet-store toy they really liked was these little spirals, which are just pipe cleaners encased in sheaths of colorful fabric. Both cats would bat enthusiastically at these, and run after them when they went skittering away across the floor; when they caught one, they'd lie down and clutch it in their paws and pull at it until it came uncoiled. It was very cute, and I appreciated the fact that it distracted them from gnawing on other long narrow objects that they might otherwise take a shine to, like my computer cables.

Unfortunately, they played with these toys so energetically that they quickly wore holes in the fabric covers, and the pipe cleaners came poking out. Once that happened, we no longer felt safe letting the cats play with them unsupervised for fear that they'd hurt themselves on the wire or even swallow part of it. (It may sound like we're just being paranoid, but several reputable pet sites, such as Catster, warn about this as a danger, and we have read horror stories about cats being rushed into surgery over a swallowed pipe cleaner.) I tried stitching the fabric back up, but they just tore it open again, and eventually we had to give up on the toys.

We tried to get more at the pet store, but they were no longer available, and we couldn't even find anything similar online. The closest we could find was this larger blue spiral, but the cats didn't seem to appreciate it like the fabric ones. It's made of a much stiffer material, and when dropped, it just lands on the ground and sits there; it doesn't bounce or roll in the same unpredictable way that made the pipe cleaners so appealing (like having real prey to chase.)

We made several attempts at making our own spiral cat toys, but they didn't work too well. Brian tried taking a piece of wire from a coat hanger, which he thought would be less hazardous, and sewing it up in a piece of scrap fabric—but like the blue coil, this toy was too stiff and stable to interest them much.

I thought a pipe cleaner might be okay if I could just wrap it up securely in one of those stretchy fabric bandages they use at the blood bank—but once I'd wound it several times around the pipe cleaner, it was too thick and ungainly to make a very good coil. Plus, Brian was still concerned that they'd manage to get the wire out from under the wrappings, so he didn't want to let them have it without supervision.

So one day, in a desperate attempt to come up with something to distract Winnie from the computer cables, I hit on the idea of trying something similar with a strip of newspaper. I just tore off a long strip from the edge, like this...

...and twisted it up into a long, thin string, like this.

I wasn't able to make this into a coil shape like the original fabric spirals, because it wouldn't stay put, but I found just tying it into a little bow made a lightweight shape that the cats enjoyed batting around. It seems to move in the same random way as the pipe cleaners, so they like tossing it, catching it, grabbing it, and generally amusing themselves without supervision. They also like to pull on the ends and try to untie it, but if they succeed, that's no problem; I can just grab it and tie it back up in a minute.

Needless to say, these little paper toys don't hold up all that well. After being subjected to claws and teeth for a week or so, they get pretty limp and ragged-looking, and they're not as much fun to play with. But that's okay; when they wear out, they can just go straight into the recycling bin (or the compost, if they're really torn to shreds) and I can easily whip up a new one in a few minutes.

So this is pretty much the ultimate ecofrugal cat toy. It costs nothing, it's made entirely from scrap material, and it can go right back in the bin when it's worn out, creating no additional waste. And if the cats don't love it quite as much as the spirals, they will at least occupy themselves with it long enough to let me get some work done.

Household Hacks: 7 easy household hacks for the bathroom

Brian and I have a disagreement about the word "hack"—specifically, its use to mean a handy shortcut for everyday life. Brian objects to it on the ground that it's overused, sometimes even in contexts where it really doesn't apply at all (such as these kitchen tips from XKCD.) But personally, I like it. To me, it conjures up images of Alexander cutting through the Gordian knot—a quick, direct solution to a complicated problem. Even the shortness of the word feels appropriate for a short, simple workaround.

Over the past few months, I've noticed that we seem to have come up with a lot of household hacks specifically for use in the bathroom. Some are for cleaning, some for grooming, and some for repairs, but all of them are specifically bath-related. So I thought I'd sum them all up in one post, as a sort of tribute to the Spirit of Hacking.

Hack #1: Clean hair from the sink drain with a plastic bag tie
Every so often, the drain in our sink gets a little sluggish. That's a sure sign that it's clogged up with hair (and usually bits of nasty grime that are clinging to the hair), and it won't run smoothly again until it's cleaned. We have a special tool for this purpose, known as a Zip-It: a long, flexible plastic shaft with little barbs on both sides. You feed this thing carefully down into the drain, and the barbs catch on the hairs so you can pull them back out. The Zip-It emerges from the drain trailing long strands of hair and associated gunk like seaweed off a lobster trap, which is disgusting, but effective.

The Zip-It is only $2.50 at Home Depot, and it's both easier and safer than those vile chemical drain cleaners, which eat through the hair with caustic chemicals that can damage your plumbing (and possibly you, if you splash any on yourself). But if you don't happen to have one on hand when a clog pops up, you can achieve similar results with a plastic garbage bag tie (the kind with rows of little jagged teeth on it, like this). Feed it down into the drain, and you can pull up the hairs from the top few inches of the pipe. It won't penetrate the pipe as deeply as the Zip-It, but it's easy to do, and it should clear away enough of the clog to get the drain running again.

Hack #2: Clean the tub with a dish wand
I used to drive myself crazy trying to get our bathtub clean. My go-to ecofrugal cleaners, vinegar and baking soda, seemed to have no impact at all on the film that clung to the base of the tub. I moved on to various commercial cleaners, including sprays, liquids, and powders; I experimented with different tools, going at the scum with a rag, a sponge, a scrubby pad, a brush, and even a special "shower scrubber" tool with an extendable handle and pivoting head, designed specifically for cleaning the tub from a standing position. (This was worse than useless, as every time I put any real pressure behind it, the head would just flip over.) No matter what I used or how vigorously I scrubbed, I could never get the tub completely clean. All I had to do was scrape my fingernails along the edge, and they'd come away with that whitish film under them.

I turned for help to my pals at the Dollar Stretcher forums. One of them enthusiastically recommended "Ajax grapefruit scented dish soap," applied with a long-handled brush while the tub and tiles are wet, and another suggested a mixture of Palmolive and sudsy ammonia in a spray bottle. Not having either of those brands on hand, I decided to try grabbing an old dish-scrubbing wand filled with generic dish soap and applying that to the wet tub right after my shower. This worked much better than anything else I'd tried. At first, I followed up with a vinegar-and-water spray to rinse all the soap residue off, but eventually I got the idea to add equal parts dish soap and vinegar to the scrubbing brush and apply everything all in one go, then rinse it off.

This is now my regular weekly routine for cleaning the tub. I keep the dishwand hanging at the ready on the towel bar, so once a week, I can just grab it right after I turn off the shower and give everything a quick scrub before rinsing it. That way I don't have to mess around getting into grubby clothes specially for cleaning. I have since seen blog posts saying this vinegar-and-dish-soap concoction works in spray form as well, which might be even easier...but since it took me so long to find a method that worked, I'm not inclined to mess with it.

Hack #3: Remove stains from porcelain with oxygen laundry booster
A few years ago, we switched to a walnut-based cat litter from Blue Buffalo. In most ways, we love it: it clumps firmly, doesn't track as much as the wheat stuff, and controls odor so well that we have never had to change the litter once since we started using it. We just keep scooping out the clumps and adding more litter, and the box keeps not stinking. This makes it a much better value than any other brand we've tried, despite its high cost per pound, because none of it goes to waste.

There's only one problem with it: the walnut fragments tend to leave a darkish stain on the inside of the toilet bowl. My usual cleaning method—vinegar-water spray and a quick scrub with the brush—had no effect. Once again, I tried upgrading to stronger cleaners, including some with chlorine bleach, but to no avail. Brian tried going at the stains with steel wool and was able to get them out temporarily—but that just ended up scratching the porcelain, so fresh stains soaked in faster than ever.

So when I got a coupon for a free carton of OxiClean, I figured it couldn't hurt to try that too. Cleaning bathrooms wasn't one of the listed uses for this product, so my hopes weren't high. But to my amazement, after I'd sprinkled it on and let it sit for a while before brushing and flushing, the stains had faded to near-invisibility. I now repeat this routine once a week, and the porcelain remains in a state of near-pristine whiteness. And I've discovered, after some experimentation, that cheaper brands of oxygen-based laundry booster, such as All, do the job just as well.

Hack #4: Strop your razor on your forearm to maintain its edge
I've mentioned this hack before in my Saving on Shaving post. As this post at Tools for Woodworking explains, stropping a blade isn't quite the same thing as sharpening it on a stone; it's more like smoothing a surface with sandpaper, gently abrading away nicks and scratches. I've seen tips on how to prolong the life of your razor blade by stropping it on a leather belt, a leather-soled shoe, or even an old pair of blue jeans—but the simplest method of all is this one, which I discovered on LifeHacker. You simply give the blade several backwards strokes against the bottom of your own forearm, which you can do right in the shower before you shave.

This method, combined with regular drying and lubrication of the blade, worked well enough for me to keep the cartridges on my old Rite Aid razor going for months on end. Sadly, that razor gave up the ghost last year, and I've yet to find a really satisfactory replacement. I tried samples from both Dollar Shave Club and Harry's, and their fancy four-or-five-blade razors just didn't give me as smooth a shave as my old, obsolete three-blade razor (not to mention that the one from Harry's literally fell apart on its third use). So for now, I'm using an el cheapo MicroTouch razor, which claims to be able to go a month on a single blade without any special interventions. I'm continuing to dry and hone the blade regularly, and while I can't exactly claim to be impressed with the results it's giving me, it is at least holding up pretty well.

Hack #5: Fix a running toilet with a drinking straw
I discovered this trick back in 2013, when we had a problem with our toilet. Basically, the flapper kept getting stuck open because the chain would either get stuck underneath it or snag on it so it couldn't close. Shortening the chain didn't work (it ended up too short, so the flapper couldn't close at all), so I adopted a trick from Wikihow: I detached the chain, fed it through a soda straw, and reattached it. This worked only partially; the rigid chain-and-straw unit was now forcing the flapper closed too quickly, before the bowl had fully filled. So Brian adapted the hack by cutting the straw in half at the middle, allowing the chain to bend. This fix worked so well that even after we eventually replaced the flapper, we reinstated the straw on the chain to keep it from snagging again.

Hack #6: Adapt your toothbrush holder with coat hanger wire 
Brian devised this toothbrush hack back in 2014, when I was trying a new brand of toothbrush that wouldn't fit in our old-fashioned toothbrush holder. This toothbrush holder dates from a simpler time when all toothbrushes had straight, smooth handles, and today's chunky, molded hand-grips just won't fit through the holes. And since it's built into the wall, replacing it isn't really an option, and leaving it unused seems like a waste.

So I hit on the idea that the way to make the toothbrush fit in the holder would be to add on some kind of construct that would allow it to slide in from the side. After a little trial and error, Brian managed to achieve this by bending a piece of coat-hander wire to make a loop that would fit around the handle, then threading the ends of it through the hole in the front, under the bottom, and out on the other side. As built, this dingus can only accommodate one bulky toothbrush, but you could modify it to add a second loop on the other side if you wanted to hold two at once. Or you could just run a second set of wires through a different hole.

Hack #7: Fix a trash can that won't close with a felt pad
Ever since we adopted our two mischievous kitties back in 2015, we've kept finding new things around the house that need to be cat-proofed. Our cat-safe vase is the most notable example, but we've also had to replace a couple of wastebaskets because the cats would either chew on the wicker basket itself or fish things out of it. The worst culprit was the bathroom wastebasket, which contained enticing strands of dental floss that the cats viewed as wonderful toys. We, on the other hand, viewed them as potential garottes for unsuspecting feline throats, and we were determined to keep them out of the kitties' paws. So we bought a small covered waste bin, the kind with a lid that you can open by stepping on a pedal.

This sort of worked, but there was a problem: sometimes the lid would get stuck in the open position, allowing the kitties to go Dumpster diving for dental floss. We tried shimming the can up in the back so it would naturally tilt forward and force the lid closed when you weren't actively stepping on the pedal, but that didn't seem to be enough. So Brian tackled the problem from the other direction; instead of forcing the lid down, he decided to force the foot pedal up.

His repair is simplicity itself. He cut a couple of strips from a felt pad, the kind you put on the bottoms of chair legs to keep them from scratching the floor, and stuck them to the lip of the trash can underneath the pedal. Now, when you step on the pedal, it lowers enough to open the lid, but it doesn't go all the way to the floor, and as soon as you remove your foot, it pops back up again, closing the lid.

This hack went through a couple of iterations before he got it to work. First he tried one layer of felt, but that wasn't enough to push the pedal back up, so he had to add a second layer on top. And he initially tried sticking the felt pads on with just their own adhesive, but they didn't stay put, so he ended up pulling out the big guns and sticking them on with epoxy. Now those pads aren't going anywhere, and those kitties aren't getting their paws on any more dental floss.


So there you are: seven simple hacks for the smallest room in the house. If you know of any more ecofrugal hacks for the bathroom that you think deserve a wider audience, please feel free to share them below; I'm always looking for more ideas.

DIY cat-safe vase 2.0

For the past year, we've been keeping flowers on our kitchen table in a makeshift cat-safe vase: a small glass under a hurricane lantern shade that we picked up at the local thrift shop. It wasn't exactly elegant, and it severely limited the number of flowers we could display at once, but it did a reasonably good job of allowing the flowers and the cats to coexist.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, the hurricane lampshade broke. It didn't get knocked off the table or anything; it just tapped against something when we picked it up to empty the vase, and a whole big chunk of the glass broke right off. Since we didn't have a spare, and there wasn't a similar shade available at the thrift shop where we found the first one, we had to remove the flowers from the table altogether until we could come up with some other arrangement for them.

Fortunately, Brian had already come up with an idea for a more sophisticated cat-safe vase. His two-pronged plan was:

• pick up a simple, clear glass vase that could be inverted over top of the small glass that holds the flowers; and
• construct a stand for both pieces to sit on, which would allow air to circulate while making the whole contraption more stable and harder for the cats to tip over.

We carried out the first stage of this plan two weeks ago. We already knew that Michael's had a good selection of plain glass vases, so we perused the selections and narrowed it down to two: a tall, narrow cylinder that would allow for tall blooms, or a wider, bowl-like vase that would accommodate wider bunches. Both were priced at $4, so it mainly came down to a question of looks, and Brian decided he preferred the narrower vase because it was easier to see through.

Then came the harder part: designing the stand to hold the two pieces. He wasn't able to tackle this last weekend because the whole weekend was taken up with Rutgers Day and May Day festivities, but on Monday he did a little tinkering in the shop with some scrap wood and came up with a stand design that, while not finished, would serve as a "proof of concept." As you can see here, it's basically a wide, square piece of wood with a hole cut in it for the inverted vase, plus four smaller pieces screwed to the top to serve as buttresses, further stabilizing the glass and making it harder for the cats to tip.

To provide air circulation, there are four large holes drilled in the bottom piece, around the edges of the circle. This creates four small gaps under the rim of the vase, big enough to allow air movement, while the four buttress pieces keep the vase secured within its circle.

We're not sure yet whether this initial design will end up being the final version or not. As you can see, there's an awful lot of empty space at the top of the vase, so I think ideally we'd either like to have the inverted glass be shorter (and possibly wider, so the blooms aren't so confined) or else make the one inside taller, bringing the blossoms closer to eye level. We're currently soaking the label off a coconut-oil jar that's a little larger than this juice glass to see whether that looks better. But if we end up having to replace the vase, shelling out another $4 isn't that big a deal.

Once we've settled on a final design for the vase, then Brian will construct a new version that looks a bit better than this one—possibly using nicer pieces of wood, and certainly giving more attention to sanding, staining, and finishing them. But for now, this initial version shows that it is at least possible to construct a vase that makes flowers and cats compatible.

Cat-safe holiday decorations

A couple of years ago, I started putting up holiday decorations indoors as well as out. Since the decorations I use outside are a simple mixture of natural greenery and ribbons, I continued this theme inside, with bits of evergreen, pine cones, and red berries, dressed up with some bright holiday ribbon. The only store-bought touch was the jingle-bell ornaments I hung from lengths of ribbon on each of the doors along the upstairs hallway.

I was pretty satisfied with this decorating scheme, but it didn't take me more than a minute to realize some parts of it just weren't going to work with our new cats in the house. Unlike sedate Amélie, who almost never jumped on anything higher than the futon, these cats get into, onto, and through everything within reach. If I tried to put baskets of evergreens on top of the tables, the cats would be sure to drag all the green stuff out of the baskets to play with or, worse still, eat. As for those little jingly bells, I was sure the kitties would find them so fascinating that they would jump up and bat at the doors as many times as it took to bring them down, and when that was done, they'd try to pull down the ribbon and shred it.

So this year, I figured I'd have to modify my decorations to make them cat-safe. For the most part, this meant putting them in high-up locations where the cats either can't or don't care to jump. Thus, I was able to keep my little pots of greenery on top of the living room bookshelf...

...and even add a couple more on the office bookcase.

I was also able to keep the bunches of evergreens in the pitchers on top of the living room TV cabinet, since that surface is too cluttered with pottery for the cats to jump on it. In fact, we've even added a few new items, a set of dessert dishes from my folks...and since I couldn't use the jingle-bell ornaments on the doors, I came up with the idea of putting them into these dessert dishes with a little spray of evergreen each and then twining the ribbons around their stems. That looked so nice that I added one to the colander full of pine cones, as well, and I think the finished display is both festive and elegant.

That still left me with one jingle-bell and length of attached ribbon, and I found the perfect place for that on top of the bathroom medicine chest, yet another spot the cats don't jump onto because it's too narrow for them. I just tucked the bell into the potted plant that's sitting up there, twined the ribbon around its basket, and set a little pear ornament next to it to reinforce the holiday theme.

In the kitchen, I was able to keep my usual arrangement on top of the refrigerator, with a pair of snowman salt and pepper shakers accompanied by a star tree topper my folks got us from Ten Thousand Villages. I added another of my little evergreen pots and our menorah to round out this holiday grouping. (We figure we'll have to set the menorah up there after lighting it all throughout Hanukkah anyway, since it's the only place we can put it where it's out of the cats' reach and away from anything flammable.)

That left me with no decorations in the guest room or anywhere downstairs. There is one surface in the guest room that's out of the cats' reach, but it's entirely covered with toys (mostly belonging to Brian, though I'll own up to a few of them). But toys are a natural match for Christmas, so I figured all they needed was something to dress them up. I was all out of the red and silver sparkly ribbon, so I pulled out a length of some other holiday ribbon I had and draped that around the shoulders of the Iron Giant and across the rest of the gathering.

The big downstairs room (still can't quite make up my mind what to call it—I thought I'd settled on "rec room," but it doesn't roll naturally off my tongue) posed a problem. Last year I put pots of evergreens on both windowsills, but I know the cats habitually hang out on one of those windowsills, and the other is at least theoretically reachable for them. I could only find one spot that was definitely out of the cats' reach: a teeny-weeny little shelf on the very top of the etagère where we keep our family photos. So I set one last little pot of evergreens in that spot, though it isn't much decoration for such a large room. Maybe I need to make something a little bigger, like one of those miniature tabletop Christmas trees. In that spot, we could probably even hang ornaments on it without having to fear that they'd end up as cat toys.

And finally, since I'd added some decoration in the upstairs bathroom, I decided to do some in the downstairs bath as well. The one high-up spot is on top of the corner cabinet where I keep my collection of cobalt glassware, so I did the same thing there that I'd done with the toys in the office; twined the last little bits of silver ribbon through the glassware, as well as a piece of gold star garland that I'd picked up at some office party. Since the downstairs bath has a sort of sun-moon-and-stars decorating scheme, this fits in quite nicely.

Ta-da! Cat-safe holiday decorations, on a budget. In fact, since all the ribbon and other materials was reused from last year, we actually didn't spend a penny on them. Though I might be inclined to pop into the dollar store and see if I can find any more of that red or silver ribbon...I think there are a couple of light fixtures I could drape some on while still keeping it out of reach of curious paws.

Money Crashers: 5 Best Types of Natural Cat Litter

Money Crashers has just printed my article on natural cat litter. As my regular readers will know, Brian and I have been through several different brands of this stuff. We were loyal users of the wheat-based Swheat Scoop for years, but were disappointed when it suddenly seemed to lose its clumping power, so we switched to the corn-based World's Best despite its higher cost. However, we quickly became disenchanted with the new brand because, despite its super clumping, it really fell down on odor control. So we went back to wheat, this time opting for the cheaper Exquisicat brand. Then, last August, I noted in passing that we'd switched again, but I never got around to posting about the reason for it and how the new litter was performing.

So if you've just been dying of curiosity, you can get the whole story, along with lots more information about natural cat litter, in the new article. It has the scoop (ha ha) on the five main types of natural litter—wheat, corn, pine, walnut, and paper—based on our experiences and what other reviewers have to say. Check it out here: 5 Best Types of Natural Cat Litter.

Household Hacks: DIY cat-safe vase

One big difference I've discovered between having two young, active cats and having one elderly, sedate cat is that our new kitties get into everything. A case in point: the vase of flowers we usually have on our kitchen table. We used to cut flowers from our garden throughout the year—roses, forsythia, phlox, whatever happened to be in bloom—and put them on the table in a nice glass goblet we'd picked up from a yard sale. This was one of my favorite cheap luxuries, and the fact that they came out of our own garden just added an extra little thrill. And since Amélie was a timid cat who never cared much to jump up on the kitchen table, the flowers were always perfectly safe.

When we brought home Winnie and Gwen, however, we quickly discovered that top-heavy vases and adventurous kitties do not make a good combination. There were no actual flowers in the goblet at the time; instead, I'd made a tasteful arrangement of bare twigs to tide us over the bleak period between Christmas greenery and the first blossoms of April. Unfortunately, these twigs apparently looked just like cat toys to the furballs, because we kept finding them—or pieces of them—scattered around the house. I thought perhaps it was just the twigs that were too tempting for them, so I removed them, leaving the empty goblet to fill with flowers as soon as there were any to pick—only to be awakened one morning by the "thunk" of the goblet itself toppling over.

At this point, I concluded that in order for flowers to coexist with cats, they'd have to be in a more bottom-heavy container that would be hard for them to knock over. So the next thing I tried was a few wildflowers in a simple mason jar. The jar itself stayed put, but the flowers didn't; we found them the next morning pulled halfway out of the jar, their petals scattered across the table. At this point, I began to suspect that any flowers put anywhere the cats could reach them were liable to be treated as kitty snacks.

This was a big problem, because when cats nosh on flowers, the flowers aren't necessarily the only victims. There's a whole long list of flowers that are toxic to cats, and it turns out that many of the perennial flowers in my new wildflower mix are on that list. So after I went to all the trouble of planting a flowerbed out front to supply us with cutting flowers all summer long, it looked like I wouldn't be able to actually bring any of the flowers inside—or any other flower, for that matter, without carefully checking it against the ASPCA's plant database first. And since there are wildflowers in our yard that I don't actually know the names of, that means that I'd probably have to give up on the idea of fresh flowers for the table altogether, except during the brief period when our roses (one of the few flowers known to be cat-safe) are in bloom.

Faced with the choice between possibly poisoning my cats or giving up on bringing nature into my home, I started searching frantically for a third option. A search for "cat safe flower vase" led to a thread on Apartment Therapy with several suggestions:

1. Get a heavy-bottomed vase the cat can't tip over. (Good, but not good enough, since I also want to keep the cats from eating the flowers.)
2. Train the cats to stay off the table by squirting them with a water pistol whenever they hop up there. (Since our cats routinely hop up onto the sink and stick their heads in under the running water, I suspect this wouldn't be much of a deterrent for them.)
3. Get them some "cat grass" to munch on, so they'll leave other plants alone. (I don't know whether they'd like the cat grass or not, but I'm pretty sure they will never leave anything alone that's within their reach.)
4. Buy only flowers that are nontoxic for cats. (That might be a reasonable idea if I were buying flowers, but I'd like to be able to harvest the ones I already have.)

For us, the most useful idea on the list seemed to be to keep the flowers in some sort of covered container, like a terrarium, so the cats couldn't reach them. However, the one specifically suggested on the site, this IKEA mini greenhouse, looked way too big for our kitchen table. So I started keeping my eyes open, while shopping and walking around town, for something else that might be more reasonable. The spring window display at our local Ten Thousand Villages had a very nice-looking "Secret Garden Terrarium" that was a reasonable size, but the $40 price tag was a little less reasonable. We attempted to cobble together a covered vase from a small canning jar with a larger one inverted over the top, but the patterns on the outside of the glass—together with the fog of condensation that formed on the inside—made it nearly impossible to see the flowers, which sort of defeated the purpose of having them on the table at all. What we really needed, I thought, was something like a hurricane lantern—a glass globe with a narrow chimney at the top, so it provides ventilation but isn't accessible to little prying paws. But where, I wondered, would we find something like that?

Well, as it turns out, at our local thrift shop. I popped in there today and, browsing among the racks of miscellaneous glassware, I discovered not one but two vaguely bell-shaped glass contraptions, open at the top and bottom. I assume them were originally part of some sort of candelabrum, since they both had drips of candle wax on them, but they looked big enough to fit over the top of a small drinking glass, which could hold a smallish bunch of flowers—so they'd be visible but protected beneath the glass shield. I thought we might have a glass at home that was small enough, but just in case, I checked the rest of the glassware rack and picked out one that would definitely fit under the dome. Two dollars for the pair, and I was off home to experiment.

As soon as I got home, I picked a small nosegay of wildflowers—some purple deadnettles and some little white critters that I don't know the name of—and popped them into the small glass with some water. Then I put the dome over the top and confirmed that it meets my requirements in one way, at least: it's actually possible to see the flowers under the glass. What's still unclear is just how well this set-up will protect the flowers from our inquisitive felines. Early signs are good: this afternoon, Winnie hopped right up on the table next to the improvised vase, and she neither knocked it over nor attempted to extract the flowers from under it. But the real test will come tonight, as we sleep, while the cats roam and explore at their will. If we get up tomorrow morning and find the whole apparatus intact, flowers and all, then I'm willing to declare my little makeshift cat-safe vase a success.

Savings challenge, week 4: Kitty cuisine

This week's topic in the Bankrate 52-Week Savings Challenge is about how to save on dog food by making it yourself. Since we don't have a dog, this challenge isn't really relevant for us; dogs and cats have different nutritional needs, and the recipes they recommend for dogs wouldn't necessarily be healthful for cats. But I figured I might as well use the topic as an opportunity to talk about what we feed our cats, and how much it costs us.

When we got our first cat, Amélie, about eleven years ago, we initially tried feeding her a combination of canned food and dry food, since that's what they'd been giving her at the shelter. However, we quickly discovered that she wasn't all that interested in the canned food; she'd eat a couple of bites of it, then walk away and leave the rest. This seemed awfully wasteful, so we asked our vet about it, and he said there should be no problem with feeding her just dry food. (It's worth noting that not all vets agree with this view. When I researched cat food on ConsumerSearch, I found that some of the experts cited in the report say cats have a low "thirst drive" because they've evolved to get most of the moisture they need from their food. Thus, on a diet of dry food, they won't get enough water and will be prey to kidney and bladder problems. However, the report adds that "most vets" see no problem with dry food, and I was more inclined to take the advice of our vet, who had actually seen and examined Amélie, than one who had never met her.)

The dry food we gave Amélie was the Authority brand from PetSmart, since it's what she was used to. An 18-pound bag of the stuff cost $27 and lasted us about four months, so altogether it cost us about $81 a year to feed her. Now, admittedly, this is not a grain-free "premium" brand, which is what many vets consider ideal for cats. However, once again, vets are divided on this issue; the cat food FAQ at PetMD.com, for instance, says that grain-free foods are "not necessarily" preferable to formulas with some grain. The main point on which all sources seem to agree is that the chief ingredient in any cat food should be meat, since cats are true carnivores and can't get all the nutrients they need from plants. The Authority food met this standard, and once again, our vet said it was fine, and we knew she'd eat it happily, so we decided not to mess with success.

Of course, I can't honestly claim that Amélie never ailed a day in her life on this diet, since she developed hyperthyroidism at age 11 and eventually died at 13 from a rare brain disorder, but neither of these problems is likely to have had anything to do with her diet. (Vet Lisa Pierson at CatInfo.org notes that there may be some link between thyroid problems and a diet high in fish or soy, but Authority doesn't contain either of these.) We can say for a fact that she never developed urinary tract infections, diabetes, or any of the other problems that Pierson insists will result from feeding your cat dry food.

You might think that if this worked fine for Amélie, we'd just stick with the same regimen for our new kittens. But we decided, since so many vets seem to recommend canned food over dry, to try them on a mixture of the two and see how they liked it. We found that they would eat canned food readily enough, as long as they weren't given too much at once—maybe a third of a small can or a sixth of a large one. (We also found, to our amusement, that when we give each one her own dish of food, she will eat part of it and then switch bowls with her sister, as if she's wondering whether the other bowl has something better than what she ordered.) So we give them a dollop of canned food every evening, and for the rest of the day, we leave out a big dish full of the dry stuff for them to nosh on at will. Our medium-sized tart pan, which we've never actually used for baking, turns out to be just the right size for the two of them to share with minimal spillage.

We've been getting our canned cat food from Trader Joe's. A 5.5-ounce can of their food costs only 79 cents, making it actually cheaper than most of the brands sold in little cans at the supermarket—and the quality, according to ConsumerSearch, is far better. It's not grain-free, but neither are many "premium" cat foods, and our cats eat it up quite happily. So, if we figure they go through a can of this stuff every 6 days, that works out to around $48 per year. That's on top of the dry food, which, if they were going through it at the same rate as Amélie, would be another $162 per year. However, it's a bit early to say whether they're actually eating the same amount she did; they might go through it faster because they're younger and more active, or slower because they're getting canned food as well. We should have a better idea in a couple of weeks, but this estimate is good enough for now.

There's one additional component in our new cats' diet that we didn't give to Amélie. When we took them to the vet for their first check-up, he said they were both suffering from upper respiratory infections, and he said it was likely they would always be prone to them after spending most of their first year in a shelter. He said a lysine supplement might help, so we looked for the stuff at several pet stores. However, all we could find was one bag of extremely expensive cat treats at our local pet boutique; the big stores didn't have even that. Our cats love the treats, but at $6 a bag, they would add about $150 a year to the cost of feeding them, so I went online looking for other alternatives. After a bit of research to compare prices and reviews, I ordered a small jar of powdered lysine from PetFoodDirect.com. (It would have cost less per ounce to buy a bigger jar of a different brand, but I wanted to make sure they would eat it first.)

It's too early to tell at this point whether the lysine is actually doing them any good, but I figure it's worth keeping them on it if it's not too expensive. The little jar cost $18 with shipping and should last about 50 days. That's only a bit cheaper than the treats—about $130 per year. However, now that I know they'll eat lysine in powdered form, I can try them on the pure stuff, with no added flavor, which is a lot cheaper. Pet owners on this forum say they give their cats 500 mg per day of the pure lysine, so at 500 mg per cat per day, a 250-gram jar should last 250 days. At $17 for the jar (including shipping), that comes out to 6.8 cents per day, or about $25 per year. That's a lot better than either the treats or the flavored stuff. Of course, that's assuming they'll eat it at all, which remains to be seen. But for a possible savings of over $100 a year, it's certainly worth risking $17 to find out.

So, assuming this lysine maneuver works out, then the total cost of feeding our new cats works out to about $235 per year—64 cents per day. Compared to the $5 per day the Bankrate reporter says he spends on his three dogs, that ain't bad at all.

DIY cat tree

As I mentioned last week, Brian and I have recently adopted two adolescent kittens into our home (our previous cat, our beloved Amélie, having died in February). We are still adjusting to the difference between one sedate, mature cat, who even in her youth was never much inclined to romp around or jump on anything above couch height, to two very active, energetic kitties under a year old. For instance, while Amélie would occasionally prowl around the legs of my chair and meow when she thought I was paying too much attention to my work and too little to my cat (who was clearly much more important), our new kitties, Gwen and Winnie, will simply hop up on my desk and place themselves between me and the computer screen. Of course, that's not necessarily a sign that they want attention, just that they want to investigate the contents of my desk and don't mind if I happen to be using it at the time.

One change we're not prepared to adjust to, however, is that while Amélie was pretty content with her homemade scratching post, Gwen and Winnie appear to consider the doormat and the back of my desk chair more suitable scratching surfaces. Before turning to behavioral therapy (such as the ol' squirt gun) to cure them of this habit, we thought perhaps we'd try offering them a new post that might be more to their liking. They're both a little bit bigger than Amélie, as well as more limber, so we figured they might need something a little taller that they could really stretch up against. And as long as we were getting a new post, we thought it might be a good idea for it to have some sort of shelf or perch on it where they could sit to look out the office window and watch the birds. (Amélie used to like being picked up and held up to the window, but the new cats don't seem to care for it.)

We checked out some of the cat "furniture" at PetSmart and Petco and found quite an extensive collection of taller pieces, but the prices were high as well—starting around $80 and ranging up into the high three figures. And aside from the cost, none of these pricey cat trees was exactly the right size and shape to fit into the space we had in mind. So the obvious solution was to take up tools once again and DIY ourselves a new cat tree, one specifically designed to fit both our space and the tastes of our new kitties.

After measuring the space, Brian took stock of his supply of scrap wood. The old post was made of two-by-fours, but Brian quickly determined that he didn't have any pieces long enough for the main "trunk" of the cat tree. He also didn't have a single piece of plywood large enough to make a base for it, since this new, taller post would require a much broader base to be stable. However, after hunting through the pile, he came up with a sawn-off branch that we'd scavenged from a friend who had recently taken down a tree, and he thought this would make a perfectly good trunk for the cat tree. Since it was irregularly shaped, we'd have to wrap it in rope or twine rather than using carpet samples as we had for the old scratching post, but that was okay; since our cats had already shown a taste for scratching our front entry rug, which was made of sisal, it seemed likely that rope would be more to their taste than carpet anyway, and it would probably hold up better as well.

As for the base, his original ideal was to take a wide, heavy plank, saw it in half, and join the two pieces together to form a rough square that would be sturdy enough to support the trunk. But after he fiddled around with the two chunks of wood for a while and couldn't figure out a good way to attach them, he abandoned that idea in favor of a three-piece stand, with two parallel supports joined by a crosspiece. He cut these pieces out of a plank of pressure-treated wood he'd bought at some point for an outdoor project and ended up not using. I was initially concerned about whether the chemicals in the pressure-treated wood might be bad for the cats, but he assured me that he was planning to seal the wood with a coat of polyurethane anyway, which should keep any nasty toxins at bay. (And, as it turns out, pressure treated wood these days is far less toxic than the old stuff anyway.)

Once he had the base assembled, he drilled five small holes in the center to attach it to the trunk. In the center, he put one of the extra-long screws we'd received as part of the hardware kit for our ill-fated yard-sale futon. Then he used regular wood screws in the other five holes to make it extra secure. He repeated this process on the top to attach the platform, made from a scrap slab of painted wood that was about the right size to accommodate one cat. Since we'd be covering this top surface with carpet anyway, looks weren't all that important.

The next step was to cover the post in rope. We'd bought two 50-foot rolls of sisal rope—the only component we actually had to buy new—for about $12 at Home Depot. However, after some rough calculations involving the diameter of the rope, the circumference of the branch, and the amount likely to be wasted in overlap at each end, he still wasn't sure that would be quite enough. Thus, he decided to start wrapping the post from the top end, near the platform, and work his way downward. That way, if there was any exposed wood left, it would be right at the bottom, where the cats weren't likely to scratch it anyway. So he smeared the post with glue along about a foot of its length, then began wrapping the rope around and around it (tucking one end under right at the top to keep it in place).

Once he'd covered the entire glued area with rope, he added a clamp to hold it in place while he smeared glue over the next section and continued working his way down. When he ran out of rope at the end of one roll, he started on the next roll, tucking the tail end of the first one in underneath. Eventually, he had the entire post covered except for a section about two inches long at the very bottom, which he decided to wrap in ordinary household twine rather than leave the wood exposed.

The next step in the process was to cover the top platform with carpet. A couple of years earlier, we'd stumbled on a stash of carpet samples at C. H. Martin, a discount store in New Brunswick, for a couple of bucks apiece. We'd bought several of them, figuring we could use them as needed to re-cover the old cat scratching post when its surface wore out, and we still had one left. Brian wrapped it roughly around the platform, trimming away the excess to make it fit as snugly as possible. At first he tried securing it with carpet tacks, but eventually he switched to the staple gun, which was faster and seemed to hold the carpet in place more securely.

After that, all that remained was to apply a coat of dark stain and a coat of quick-drying, water-based polyurethane to the base. By the next morning, the entire creation was installed in our office, right next to the futon and neatly lined up with the bottom of the window. The cats were quick to investigate it as they do with any new object, circling it and sniffing at it curiously, but they didn't seem to get the idea what to do with it. So, throughout the day, I gave them a couple of hints. When Winnie climbed up onto my desk and disrupted my work, instead of picking her up and dumping her onto the futon, I deposited her on the platform of the cat tree, which she explored curiously for a few minutes before successfully making her way back down via the back and seat of the futon. Later on, I gave both her and Gwen a quick demonstration of how to scratch the surface of the rope. Winnie gave it a brief try and walked away, but Gwen took to it more eagerly, quickly figuring out that with all her claws out, she could actually climb up the tree instead of just standing on the floor and scratching. By the end of the day, she had managed, with some difficulty, to climb all the way up onto the platform. Winnie seemed to be having some thoughts about jumping up from the top of the futon to join her, but instead she settled for sitting below the platform and taking swipes at her sister's tail.

It remains to be seen just how much use they will actually make of the platform, but as long as they're both willing to use the center post for scratching—in preference to the rest of the furniture in the office—we'll consider our DIY cat tree a success.


UPDATE (3/26/14): After the cats had used it for a few days, we concluded that the post was actually a bit too tall for them. They had a bit of trouble getting onto the platform from the futon, and the long post would rock back and forth a bit when they did. So Brian took the base off and cut the post down a little, removing that last two unmatched inches at the bottom. Now the reassembled post reaches just to the bottom of the windowsill, so the cats can still see out, but they have less trouble hopping up. He also added some felt furniture pads to the base to help stabilize it.