Pet-Friendly Furniture and the Convenience of Automating Cat Care
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- Minimalist
- HDB (BTO)
- ~1,000 sqft
- 3 br
- Couple Living
When we got the keys to our home, we haven’t adopted any of our cats yet. When we did eventually adopt our first cat, Moshi, we got a reality check that caring for cats is not as easy as it seems. I guess it differs from cat to cat, but for both of our cats, they are very curious creatures. With our second, Mandu, he’s the daredevil in the household. He climbs onto every surface he wants to, messes them up, damages furnitures and would keep going to places he’s not supposed to even though he understands that he shouldn’t be there. In this post, I’ll share some ways we tackle our ‘cat problems’ so to speak, and ways we counter them. Here, in our living room, is the heart of where our cats spend most of their time in. As we soon learned quickly that Mandu likes climbing up things, we installed this cat wall for them to climb up to their hearts desire. Lucky for us, they both don’t really scratch up our sofas too much. Even when did, it’s not noticeable due to the material of our sofa. Generally, sofas that are made of suede/velvet/corduroy tend to do better against cat scratches. We got this in the beginning when we just adopted Moshi for only a few days. We were so lucky that someone was giving this away together with a cat scratching pole at our estate. It came at such perfect timing. So, yes, it would be a good idea to keep a lookout in estate Telegram groups for freebies! In the corridor of our rooms, we have our newest addition which we got during the recent 11.11 sale. It’s an automated cat litter box! I’ve been meaning to buy this for the longest time and finally could do so. It’s only been less than a week since we installed this. Mandu has been using this since day 1. Moshi on the other hand haven’t used this at all yet. She hisses and attacks the cat litter box when it starts turning. It’s going to take some time before she gets used to it. Till then, we still have our manual litter boxes for her to use. With automated litter boxes, do take note on the direction in which the barrel inside turns. It should never ever turn on the Y-axis, closing the entire entrance of the box. Another safety feature to take note is to ensure that during a spin cycle, when a cat approaches near the entrance of the litter box, the machine will sense the cat and stop moving. With these two safety features, the machine is generally quite safe to use. This is also a newest addition in our household. It’s a timed food storage dispenser with ice packs below to keep their wet food fresh since they like eating their food in bite sizes throughout the day. This has 6 compartments in it. But we just use 3 slots. It probably would be more useful when we travel. But on a day to day, we just fill up their wet food in the morning for their breakfast, snack and dinner. So, far they have been eating normally from there. And Moshi, being a tech grandma, seems to be reacting better to this gadget, albeit still cautious and wary. And lastly, we have this water fountain which I feel is a must for all households with cats. In the beginning, I used to have to change the water bowls a few times a day which felt a bit too much of an effort. With this fountain, it has saved us a lot of time and effort refilling water. We only now have to refill this about once a week or so and change the filter. I do also find that my cats drink more water now because of the fountain. 
Earlier on, I mentioned about how Mandu jumps up everywhere. Unfortunately, my office took the most hit from his antics. I got tired of picking up all the mess daily and decided to ban them both from coming in to save my sanity. I bought this partition divider from Taobao and so far, it has held up and secured my office well. This specific type of partition divider cannot be found locally. I own a few door partition dividers that I bought from local sellers on Shopee, but I found those to be rather flimsy and probably would not hold up against my 5kg 11 month old cat/kitten(?). Eventually, once they get older and more calm, I’ll reopen the doors back for them. This is a door partition divider that I got from a local Shopee seller. The function of this divider is to prevent them from jumping onto our rack which holds my husband’s fish tanks. That would have been a catastrophe if we just left it open. Overall, I have to say that with cats, it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what works for the cats and the cat owners. Age does play a part. Generally, the younger cats tend to be more active and will tone it down once they age. I never expected to have to change so much of my home just so we could minimise the damage they make. I thought that they were an easy pet, but boy was I wrong 😅. But in this pawrenting journey, it has been quite rewarding and we were also able to be cat sitters and earn some side income.
- 18 November
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