Chatzi is first to explore and seems happy and confident. And noisy.
Teego is next, but much more subdued. He's only been outside once in his life!
I hope Chatzi learns not to hook his claws into the wire mesh
Now the other two have checked that it's safe, Freya comes in to give the catio a once-over.
Apparently, someone called "Huffle Mawson" told Chatzi that it's ok and great fun to chew leaves in the garden.
This is a supposedly "artistic" photograph. We look gorgeous either way. Artistic or not.
The behaviour of the three cats is very different. Chatzi was straight in, and very confidently exploring everywhere.
Teego was quite nervous and with us sat down in there, was almost clingy, weaving in and out of our legs, although indoors, he’s the most aloof and least touchy of the three.
Freya walked in, fairly confidently, went to the far corner, and jumped straight up and climbed the mesh to the top, in two bounds! Chatzi copied her about 10 seconds later!
After this, about 10 minutes later, we noticed Freya doing a lot of pacing along the far two sections. I know this is a problem with Zoo Animals, but should we be concerned so soon? I’m inclined not to worry unless that’s all she does every time she goes out there.
Anyway, all that’s left now, is to knock a catflap in the wall so they can come and go as they please, as it’s a bit of a fuss ferrying them one by one from the house to the Catio!
This is Daddycat doing that hillarious gag where you stand behind the wire, and pretend you're in prison. ha. ha.
Pretending to work - it's quite slimming to hold your hands above your head, isn't it?
This is all the wire mesh left, from a 30 meter roll of 25x25 mesh. I hope there's enough to do the end panel!
These diagonal supports are very useful for adding structural rigidity to the whole thing. If we did it again, we'd start using them earlier on in the process.
Looking like a proper Catio now!
There's a lot of ripples in the mesh, generally all over. It's not possible to pull it tight, so I think it's pretty much the way it goes with mesh
All that’s left now, is to do the end panel with what’s left of the mesh, and fit the door and hinges.
Oh, and cut the hole in the wall for the catflap, so we can come and go when we want!
We’re so excited – outdoors sounds like great fun!
I’m very excited abut the catio. What do you think Teego?
For anyone who wonders what is a Catio, it’s an outdoor cage for Cats! And since it sounds a bit like Patio, People call it a Catio. Do people in Americaland have Patios? I wonder if it’s an English word?
First you cut the wood for the Catio, using some scarey wood eating machine. Daddycat loves it because it’s a powertool. Daddycat’s love noisy powertools, the noisier the better. Cats DO NOT LIKE powertools. He used a mighty saw, here’s a link to the review article.
Then you do a little dance as you paint the wood, as Daddycat is demonstrating here.
This is a posed photograph of Daddycat pretending to paint the Catio. It’s meant to look like he did all the painting, when in fact, we think mommacat did a lot of the painting!
This is 30m of 25x25mm mesh. It’s so heavy Daddycat tried to lift it, and couldn’t even move it!
This is not the way to follow Health and Safety guidelines.
WOOHOO!! it’s going to be a great big catio!
Daddycat’s friends, RoarkeCat and RobCat came to help him. They like powertools too. They laugh at Daddycat a lot. I think that’s because he’s funny?
Cats DO NOT LIKE powertools. Did I mention that already?
The mesh is attached to the frame with a staple gun. That’s also a powertol, but not as noisy as most powertools.
We can’t wait to go out in our catio! Maybe they’ll forget to put the roof on?
We’ve had the draw now for the UK and the US winner of one of these fantastic Cat Maze puzzle feeders!
We videoed the draw to show that there was no favouritism, although nobody sent any bribes anyway, so we weren’t going to show any favouritism anyway!!
Well, this is our first review of five, and we picked the one that we thought might be the most exciting to review first! Be sure to read all the way to the bottom to WIN one in a competition!
It’s called the Food Maze, and it’s a Puzzle Feeder. That means that the cat has to complete a task in order to be rewarded by a treat. A human puzzle feeder would need to be very complicated with knobs and dials and switches to make it hard for them, but for a cat it can be a lot simpler.
A cat’s natural instincts are to hunt and to scavenge, so they like to chase and kill, or discover food by looking carefully. You put the treats or dry biscuits in the top, and the kittie has to knock the biscuits from the top layer into the second layer, and then knock them into the third. After the third layer, it drops into the tray at the bottom, and then Chatzi steals your reward! I’m sure that’s not how it’s meant to be, but that’s how it works in our house!
Our first impression of it was very good. The online price is around £10 – £15, (or $10-$15) which is incredibly cheap considering what it is, but it feels very solid and doesn’t feel like thin plastic that’s going to break within a week! It looks kinda nice too, with blue tinted clear plastic and funky lime green on the inside.
With all three of us playing on the food maze, it got a bit chaotic, and there were paws flying everywhere, and treats dropping out all over the place, but if you watch the video, later on when Freya and Chatzi were locked out of the room, Teego used the food maze on his own and it worked very well, and he was very calmly figuring things out.
Here’s our video review!
There is one thing that we’d like them to change on the next version, and that’s the lid. All of us will eat the treats through the hole in the lid as that’s the easiest way to get to the treats! So Daddycat put a small plate over the opening and that stops us cheating.
We expected it to fall over within 2 minutes, expecting either Freya or Chatzi to give it a pull, and it would all come tumbling down! But in reality, there was only one instance when it was pulled, but the cat let go and it stood back up again, so that’s a great mark for stability.
We really liked this – it’s a sensible price, I would genuinely have expected it to be double the price, and since food is involved, I doubt cats will ever get bored of it.
I’m going to award the Catit Design Senses Cat Maze a total of FIVE PAWS out of FIVE!
Now for the competition!
The lovely people at Hagen have given us TWO of these fantastic puzzle feeders to give away as prizes! They want this to be a Trans-Atlantic competition – there’s one for kitties in The USA, and one for kitties in the UK! We’re really sorry for kitties anywhere else, but we can’t afford to send them anywhere else!
The competition is now CLOSED! Visit us again soon or subscribe, to enter our other TWO competitions coming up!
pee ess… We haven’t received any payment whatsoever for this review, other than the products theselves for review for free. It’s our genuine and honest opinion.
