Productive Procrastination!

[skellington1]

Doing better today.

I emailed Des and my uncle W about my lighting dilemmas, so I can get advice from actual professional people (a theatre lighting person and an architect, respectively). YAY for knowing nice, interesting people!

As a byproduct of that, I now have an annotated floor plan, so if anyone is curious I can post that somewhere.

Also, one

Comments

[tersa]

I abuse and neglect them so, with their toys and their fancy schmancy food and the fireplace to lay in front of and all. :P

ABUSED, I SAY. ABUSED.

And at least long skinny hallways are good for chasing balls down!

Very true! And also very good for chasing each other down, haha.

Once the studio is done I'll be doing *lots* of furniture rearranging. I'm really looking forward into having more space for everything, including kitties. :)

Yay, more space! :)

Hardware stores will cut boards for you, which is the biggest tool-requiring bit if you don't mind a boring square edge.

And, honestly, I don't. Fancy-shmancy would be lovely, but I can't afford fancy-shmancy; I'll take utilitarian over nothing every time and twice on Sundays. Some nice made to measure boards, brackets attached to studs, and carpet scraps glued down to within an inch of its life is all I'm looking for. Maybe some sisal bits for claw sharpening if I'm feeling adventurous.

If you want longer and are worried about space, you probably don't need it to be nine inches deep, either. Deep would be nice for a resting area, but for a highway... well, I suppose it depends on the chubbiness of your cats. Mine pass each other on the windowsill, and that's only six inches.

Toast is still a hefty chunk of a cat (although down to 16 lbs from his salad days of 21 lbs) but even he has no problems navigating my 4" wide window sills. I'd probably want to go for 6" wide, and how I'd envision the highway running it would be high enough not to obstruct people's heads or light sources (thanks to the hall running down the middle of a house with what I would approximate is a 12' high vaulted ceiling (not unlike the one depicted in the link, except with a steeper angle and running all the way from the front of the living room to the back of my bedroom).

you could also buy the same companies Indiana Jones Cat Rope Bridge for a similar cost! :P

Ohhhhhh, that one I was admiring. :)

But now I just thought that Izzy would find a way to chew through the ropes, because--Izzy. (She's destroyed one set of Levolor-style blinds from chewing through the pull and her favorite fishing wand toy, the rope is being held together by at least three knots at this point)

(some cats must have up. Calliope must have In)

Izzy needs up. And under. And In.

She's like every bad habit you could ask for rolled up in one cat.

Oh, I should've added: as part of my abuse and neglect, I also fuel their drug addiction. Calliope has a problem. Someone's going to show up at make me send her to rehab.

Then she'd get to meet my three. XD Toast has been a pot fiend...well, for as long as I can remember, and the old stoner has rubbed off on the young whippersnappers to varying degrees. Feeding him fresh catnip is the surest way I have to prompt him to eat, because like any good pothead, any time he has fresh 'nip, he gets the munchies. (Literally--soon as the catnip is gone, off he goes to his food bowl to chow down). Izzy is almost as bad, while Tali nibbles about half a leaf delicately and she's done. ("I can quit anytime.")

[skellington1]

I'm just going to stew in vaulted ceiling jealousy for a bit. :P I have boring 8' ones, and even six inches does so much to make a room feel bigger. With the way the roof is constructed it'd be a major undertaking to change anything.

I'm definitely thinking you could do a section of cat highway as a weekend project. Get your measurements right, get them to cut a standard board to length at the hardware store -- you'd have to pick either 7.5 wide or 5.5 wide, because you can't buy an actually-six-inch board, and I don't think they'll rip 'em lengthwise -- and go to town with a stud finder to place the brackets. Since cats don't care if it's perfectly level, you could place it by measuring *down* from the ceiling -- that way it looks level to you, regardless of what your house is actually doing.

My cats go MAD for the catnip. Definitely not like stoners -- they get high and want to disembowel things. I say Calliope is worse because Monkey has never tried to steal the jar from me. Calliope is convinced that she can bypass her dealer and get it from the source. She'll slip one paw in the jar, one paw around it, sit back on her haunches, and YOINK.

[tersa]

I'm just going to stew in vaulted ceiling jealousy for a bit. :P I have boring 8' ones, and even six inches does so much to make a room feel bigger.

Well, if it makes you feel better, the reason I have vaulted ceilings is because I live in a manufactured home and have no attic. :) I essentially have a few inches of shell that defines both the inside and outside of my house.

Which is why it gets so bloody cold in the winter. I would kill for the ability to insulate my house.

you'd have to pick either 7.5 wide or 5.5 wide, because you can't buy an actually-six-inch board

5.5 would probably be plenty wide enough. I'd just have to figure out where to put/start it. The logical place would be around the hutch and the cat tree there, because that would be the way to 'get high', but that wall is relatively short (maybe 6-7' wide, with 4' of that taken up by the top of the hutch and the cat tree next to it). So I'd either need to wrap it around into the hallway -or- carry it up the wall towards the front door.

Pictures. Definitely pictures are necessary. XD

they get high and want to disembowel things.

I've heard of cats that do that, but damn. :)

I say Calliope is worse because Monkey has never tried to steal the jar from me. Calliope is convinced that she can bypass her dealer and get it from the source. She'll slip one paw in the jar, one paw around it, sit back on her haunches, and YOINK.

Hahaha. Does she try to then dump it all over the floor and roll around in it? One of my friends' cats did that with a big clamshell they had of catnip on top of an entertainment center.

And whyyyyyyy was I not using this icon? Which was me catching Toast in the act of having found a dime bag of dried 'nip up on my bathroom vanity in the old place, jumping up where he wasn't supposed to be, tearing it open, and definitely inhaling.

Then there is this:

[skellington1]

Which is why it gets so bloody cold in the winter.

All of my jealousy just immediately dissipated. I prioritize insulation over almost everything. Code requires me to upgrade the insulation in my attic as part of the studio project, and I'm thrilled! Of course, first I have to fix the vent baffles (ugh) and rake out the existing insulation, because Calliope keeps getting into the attic and digging herself little cat-width trenches. It's like the Western Front up there, only white and itchy. My entrenching cat has lowered my R value by at least 8. *headdesk* The energy audit guy laughed aloud when he saw it -- says he's never seen an attic that looked like mine.

It all comes back to cats eventually.

Pictures. Definitely pictures are necessary. XD

Yes! My mental picture isn't clear enough.

pictures
hehehe, stoner cat. The expression in that icon is *priceless*.

I don't know what Calliope would do with the nip jar, because I never let her take it. She wasn't finding it herself and stealing it, she was trying to steal it directly from me. We have little tug-o-wars.