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The ultimate cat house

This house in Japan has to be one of the most impressive examples of designing for cats that I’ve ever seen. It includes almost all of the features I’ve been thinking about over the last year or so:

  • high walkways
  • cat stairs
  • hiding places
  • internal catflaps in the walls
  • large, secure outside pens
  • well positioned litter tray
  • cat tunnels

It’s no surprise that such a house would be built in Japan, as My Cat Goma says, falling birth rates means that pets are becoming more and more important to their owners. But, contrary to what some people seem to think, this isn’t indulgence. Cats that are kept indoors need more opportunities to exercise and play than outdoors cats, and if they don’t get them then they are prone to obesity and diabetes. Giving them high walkways and cat stairs is just encouraging natural behaviour, as is providing hidey-holes.

Overall, the interior design of this house is very modern, clean and sleek, and with all the windows and light it looks like it’d be lovely to live in. Human needs haven’t been compromised to satisfy the cats’ needs, but rather the two are satisfied together, sympathetically.

You can expect to see many of these features in my house design, when I get that far!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 9:10 am and is filed under design for cats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “The ultimate cat house”

  1. Safe for cats says:
    October 19, 2009 at 11:42 pm

    [...] the spirit of good design, such as that of the ultimate cat house, I was thinking that if you had a big enough yard, it would be quite cool to create more [...]

  2. La détention convenable du chat d’appartement — Climb to the Stars says:
    April 4, 2009 at 7:18 am

    [...] maison qui convienne tant aux chats qu’aux humains. On y trouve par exemple un article sur la maison ultime pour ailurophiles, ou un autre sur la possibilité de dresser un chat à l’aide d’un [...]

  3. typaldos says:
    March 15, 2009 at 9:08 pm

    I’ve always kept my cats indoors, and in the last few years created a great outdoor area for them from a dog run. One of my cats hated being inside so she loved the outdoor area. The run had a heated doghouse and a cage to climb in so she was very happy. Both cats are gone now but they lived very long happy lives (to ages 18 and 19).

  4. Rosie and Cheeto says:
    February 12, 2009 at 10:44 pm

    The. Coolest. Place. To. Live. EVER!

    OMC- we’d pay a squillion temptayshuns in rent to live in this CAT PALACE!

  5. debs says:
    February 11, 2009 at 7:22 pm

    OMG, I would *love* to live in that house (and I’m sure my cats would, too!)

    After losing two of our beloved cats on the road over the past few years, I’ve made the decision that our two youngest cats (the ninjas) are going to be indoor cats, as long as we’re living near a road. I’m treated as a madwoman by my husband and my in-laws, who think that cats can’t/shouldn’t be kept indoors. But I think the cats don’t mind at all – they have plenty of toys (both real toys and things they’re not really supposed to play with, but do anyway) and they have a three-storey kitty tower thing with a wendy house on top and a tunnel on the bottom, which they love. They climb our doors and shelves, and they’ve pulled off a plinth from under a kitchen cupboard, so they use that as a tunnel/hiding place. One of their favourite toys is a wardrobe-sized wood-framed, canvas-covered clothes store, which they have hours of fun with. And, of course, they have each other – the best toy either of them could wish for.

    Because the boys don’t go out, I tend to play with them a lot more than I do with my other cat, who has always been an outdoor cat and gets annoyed if I don’t let her out. She doesn’t go near the road because she’s (sensibly) frightened of it.

    There’s no reason at all not to keep cats indoors, as long as they have access to all the things they need – food, a toilet, a bed, exercise and fun – it’s not mollycoddling them if you keep them indoors, it’s good sense. Whenever someone asks “but isn’t it really horrible, having to clean all those litter trays?” I always reply “yes, but nowhere near as horrible as scraping a dead pet off the road”.

    So until we get our dream house out in the middle of nowhere, our little ninjas are definitely going to be house cats. And I bet if they knew what had happened to our last couple of outdoor cats, they’d thank us for making that decision :)

    Debs x