Quick 'n Easy T-Shirt Cat Tent
Cats aren’t easy to please. They won’t touch the toys you bought for them, but they’ll spend hours lounging in the cardboard boxes leftover from your latest online shopping binge. You try and try to get them to use their expensive, fluffy cat bed, but they’d rather snuggle up in a pile of laundry.
Before you break down those cardboard boxes and clean out your closet to make room for your new finds, make a DIY Cat Tent for your kitty.
Source: Jessy Ellenberger
Materials:
a cat
a medium t-shirt
a 15 x 15 inch piece of cardboard
two wire hangers
tape
safety pins
something to cut the hangers with and help bend them
Step 1
Cut off the squiggly ends of the hanger. If you don’t have heavy duty scissors or pliers, bend the hanger back and forth to weaken the metal and then make your cut.
Step 2
Reinforce the cardboard edges with tape to add some more stability, and shape the hangers as seen above. This is the frame of your tent so do your best to make them as uniform as possible!
Step 3
Use your hanger to poke holes in all four corners of your base. Be careful not to make the holes too big, and be sure to leave yourself at least half an inch to ensure that the cardboard won’t tear when you assemble it.
Step 4
Cross the two hangers in the middle and make sure all the ends touch the surface you’re working on. Tape them together really well so they don’t shift, and push the ends through the holes you just made in the corners.
Step 5
Bend at least an inch on the bottom of each hanger so it sits against the bottom of the cardboard. Tape the ends down flat against the cardboard, and make sure you tape it well so it’s nice and smooth. You don’t want it to snag the T-shirt when you pull it over!
Step 6
Pull the shirt over the tent frame and position it so the neck hole is in the front middle and the bottom of the shirt is trailing behind the tent frame.
Fold up the excess from the bottom of the shirt and tighten it up so the neck hole is taut and safety pin the bottom in place. Then pull the sleeves tight and safety pin them in place too.
As you can see in the last image, it should be pretty tight over the frame. Keep tucking and safety pinning until it’s ready!
You can use another old T-shirt as a cushion or anything else you think would make your cat comfortable. Sprinkle a little cat nip inside and you’re ready to give it to your cat!
Instructables is a free project-sharing website where you can learn how to make anything! Here are more great projects made by Jessy:
