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Feline fancy: How one home turned into cat playground

SINGAPORE – At one glance, you can tell who rules the roost in this condominium apartment in Changi. It’s not owner Adeline Loo – it is Buttons and Nemo, her two nine-month-old cats.

SINGAPORE – At one glance, you can tell who rules the roost in this condominium apartment in Changi. It’s not owner Adeline Loo – it is Buttons and Nemo, her two nine-month-old cats.

“It’s no secret – everyone knows I’m a slave to them,” said Loo. “I have to do everything for them – make them happy, play with them. If they get bored, you can tell; then you’d better play with them - otherwise they start scratching furniture. If they give me a bit of recognition, I’m like, ‘Yay! My cats love me!’

“That’s the hierarchy – the cats are up there and I’m down here,” she added.

They are quite literally “up there”, doing the catwalk on a narrow elevated walkway that Loo had built. She calls it their “superhighway” and it runs through all the rooms in the 925-sq ft apartment. Most cat owners have a scratching post or two in their homes, but Loo has a custom-made feature wall with hammocks, rope bridges and nesting baskets for the feline siblings to play on. She is also planning to turn her outdoor patio into a “catio”. It’s just part of how Loo has “catified” her home.

“Catification” is a term coined by cat behaviourist Jackson Galaxy and refers to creating feline-friendly environments that cater to a cat’s natural instincts to climb, perch, rest and play. (Cat lovers will want to note that Galaxy, a well-known feline guru and the host of Animal Planet’s My Cat From Hell, will be in town to give a talk this Saturday.)

Thanks to Galaxy, Loo said, she isn’t ashamed to proclaim herself a “crazy cat lady”. “Catification and liking cats have become cool because of him – because he and his approach are cool,” she said. “I mean, come on – cat videos rule dog videos 10 to one.”

So what is it about cats that drives Loo to do this? “Cats are so aloof and they have so much attitude, but when they do come to you and manja you, it’s really a heart-melting moment,” she said. “Most people see pets as secondary but, like I said, cats are the number one citizens here.”

 

FOR CATS’ SAKE

Within her condominium estate, Loo’s unit is known as “the cats’ house”, especially at night when her house lights shine out like a signal through the cat-shaped hole in her wall. “We are famous here. The cats have fan art – children draw pictures of them and ring my doorbell asking to play with them. They love the attention.”

The former paralegal who is now a “maker” – Loo runs a four-month-old knitting business called It Takes Balls, making handknitted items using upcycled fabric – said she drew up the designs for the vertical kitty playground after doing research online at sites such as hauspanther, Etsy and Ikea Hackers. They were then executed by local furniture makers Plane And Bevel, whom she said were “excited” by her request. She spent S$2,000 to “catify” her apartment.

“(The craftsman) had never done it before but he was very excited to do it. I told him I believe he can create a market for it here and true enough, although it’s only been two months, people know about this catwalk. He told me he had a lot of people inquiring about it,” she said.

The 32-year-old said the catification of her home is an ongoing project. “These are all works in progress,” she said.

“For example, I want to wrap the metal parts with sisal rope so that it’ll match (the other fixtures) better. I still have stuff coming in, such as a better scratching post that I ordered online. It’s this infinity lounge that’s very popular now and obviously, it’s priced like crazy.”

While Loo said she “spends a lot” on her pet passion, she laughed self-deprecatingly: “I’m like a stereotype. My mother is like, ‘You know, you’re not going to escape this. You like cats, you like knitting. And you had to buy a rocking chair.’

She added: “Every group of friends has a token cat lady.”

Loo’s personal interior design tastes may clash with what she has done (“I would love to have clean white walls ... a very clean look; but then my cats wouldn’t have things to play with”) but she is happy with the end result. “With this, you know your cat is going to be happy. Their minds are activated. They can exercise.”

And a cat wall, she thinks, is as good a design feature as any. “A feature wall, where your TV is, is the main part of every home. The entertainment wall is always the focal point in the house. This is my entertainment wall,” she said. “When my friends come over, they say they don’t even need to watch TV because they watch the cats. Every time Nemo does a jump, they’re like, ‘Oh, yay, Nemo, go!’ It’s like watching football.

“There are probably some people who, when they walk past, are like, ‘Why did they do this?’ But we are all the same – we just want to show off what we’re most proud of.”

 

Jackson Galaxy will give two talks on Aug 1, at 2pm and 6pm, at The Star Vista. There will also be a cat adoption drive from 11am to 8pm. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/AnimalPlanetSEA

The sixth season of My Cat From Hell premieres tonight at 10pm on Animal Planet (Singtel TV Ch 208 and StarHub TV Ch 424).

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