Homemade "Deluxe" Kitty Condo

Michael has recently developed an obsession with dragging things out of the corner where we tend to pile recyclables until recycling day to use in "projects". As one example, I walked around the corner one morning to find soda can dog (please ignore messy piles of random things behind soda can dog).

As an aside, to alleviate the problem of being buried under huge piles of abandoned art projects I have had to introduce the concept of some projects being practice projects while other projects are keeper projects. The practice projects, we make and then throw away or recycle perhaps taking a picture of it first. The keeper projects are displayed, but only after taking something else down off the wall, or off the table to make room first.

I decided to redirect Michael to a project that might actually be useful. We collected sturdy, decently sized boxes and built a four story, six room, double-wide kitty condo. The boxes are held together with packing tape. Scissors cut openings in the boxes and we used pipe cleaners as toys to tempt the kitties in. I did most of the work while Michael "helped" by enthusiastically bounding around, decorating the condo by taping on scrapbook paper (often covering entrances), and twisting up pipe cleaners into interesting shapes and calling them kitty toys.

The kittens (now a year old - see them when they were tiny) were definitely intrigued and the entire project kept Michael engaged for at least an hour. Hmm. Ignore random messy piles in the background of the picture again. I'd say I'm going to work on that problem with my housekeeping, but I try to be truthful here.