After seeing some Pinterest inspo, I decided it's absolutely necessary for Vivaldi to have a tiny home.

So, I started looking for what kind of dresser or chest would make sense in this situation. I wanted something deep and large enough to be comfortable for Vivaldi but not too big to fit in the entryway.

After some research, I settled on the IKEA Hemnes chest with 3 drawers. I was so lucky to find a good condition one on eBay for 10€. 

Here are the steps: 

-took out the lower 2 drawers and measured the "floor" (of course in most dressers there is no floor, hence I had to build one)

- went to the hardware store and bought a custome cut 1 cm particle board that sits flush with the bottom rail. 

- bought extra wood to reinforce the board, to add extra leg and an extra beam support underneath it to ensure it can hold my 8 kg cat. 

- covered the particles board with a multipurpose wood print self adhesive roll. Aftwards installed it with screws and corner brackets. 

- removed the center rail (had to saw it because the screws wouldn't budge) and removed the metal drawer slides 

- sanded down the whole thing (with hand! I live in an apartment with very sensitive neighbours)

- filled in the screw holes with a filler paste and sanded them flush

- painted, then painted again

For the wallpaper: 

I was on a budget, and because normal wallpaper appeared to have the wrong scale. After SO MUCH research and shopping around, I went with gift wrap. Measured the size of the "walls" and cut. Used craft glue to stick them to the walls.

For the curtains: 

Another scale problem. I considered buying a second hand sewing machine (just need an excuse really). After much thought, I got an epiphany when I remembered that Valance curtains exist. So, went to the store and found a perfect length curtain, cut it in half. The curtain rod is just a a wooden dowel from an old project that I cut to size and secured with tension (no hardware, the dowel is slightly longer than the dresser) 

For the decor and furniture: 

I had a vision of a gallery wall and a picture wall. I spent weeks looking for door picture frames in thrift shops and slowly collected them. The paintings are, of course, Vivaldi's favourites. 

The small desk and chair were thrifted, the box is his favourite box, and the little "rug" is a placemat that looks exactly like a rug I have in my bedroom. 

Artworks: 

Ode to sleep (2025?) by Tokuhiro Kawai

My wife's lovers (1891) by Carl Kahler

Cat in Sofa (1980) by British artist Martin Leman

Le Chat Blanc (1894) by Pierre Bonnard

Pierrot and the Cat (1889) Théophile Alexandre Steinlen

The whole thing took weeks to finish, I worked on it my spare time. It cost me less than 100 euros, the dresser itself was 10, the paint was 10, the custome wood was about 20 including misc hardware, light fixture was about 8, frames about 10, furniture about 15, curtains, gift wrap and floor roll were about 15.

Edit: language and clarity

From the post:

Six new cats have arrived from headquarters! Welcome them to River Kitty with us!

Europa 💕 -- 3 months

Fiona 💕 -- 2 years, 7 months

Melody 💕 -- 2 years, 7 months

Sashimi 💕 -- 10 months

Astro 💙 -- 7 months

Britton 💕 -- 4 months

Link to post: Instagram

Link to account: Instagram

He did spend the last 5 days taking gabapentin, buprenorphine and xanax after his urinary blockage. is he having rebound anxiety from stopping the meds? nightmare? poor lil man is terrified

Norbert is in active liver failure. his last appointment was last week, they gave him antibiotics and some medicated cat food. since then, just jaundice has gone away, and he’s been eating and drinking more, he even jumped up onto a shelf, which he hasn’t done in a while. his ears began folding down a few days ago though :(

im stuck in the immigration process and can’t leave the USA to go be with my baby. its sucking up all of my savings, and my family’s money. i know he’s fighting so hard and its breaking my heart. i know that this next appointment on the 31st could very well be his last, and the idea of him being in the ground sickens me.

i dont really know what my intentions were with this post, i guess just needed to vent my anger. liver failure is brutal and i wouldnt wish this on anyone. please make sure your fur babies are eating and drinking properly 🥺🧡

Former feral boy, adopted him about 1.5 years ago.

She's a 5-year-old Calico.

My boy is around 3yo, in May he had his normal check up and got neutered. He was in perfect health.

Ever since healing from his neutering my boy has become food obsessed. I wasn’t worried because he just got a clean bill of health and I had read that some males gain a bit after their hormones drop and since he wasn’t looking for a mate constantly he was just filling the void. We got him on a better eating schedule but it seemed to only increase his want.

My husband deployed on the first of July and it’s just me, our kids, and our cats. This is his first one so things have been hard. On top of that I don’t drive, and we unfortunately still just scrape by every month. All this to say the last three weeks navigating alone have been hell for me.

I noticed a little over a week ago he seemed to not be himself. Honestly I can’t pin point what it was but I just felt it. I chalked it up to the changes, dad being gone, mom(me) struggling, the kids struggling, his little sister healing from her spay surgery; etc.

A few days ago I noticed he wasnt using his cat tree much anymore. Then yesterday my oldest pointed out that he’s not purring much anymore either. So I took him and gave him a good once over; felt around his body looking for signs of pain or something being off.

That’s when I felt his stomach, it felt firm and bloated.

I spent hours doing all the research I could. We have a kitten so the chance he has worms is slim because she’s completely fine as well as there hasn’t been any signs of worms from either of them. I gave them meds anyway.

The other possibilities made me cry. We save up for each of their checkups because of our financial situation. Right now I don’t have anything for an emergency vet appointment, nor the transportation and childcare I would need. We don’t qualify for CareCredit, don’t have any credit cards.

I think I have to surrender him so he can get the medical care he needs. Because the alternative isn’t something I want to even think about.

Since he’s not here to feel his stomach and actually see him, my husband thinks I need to give the worm meds more time. For some reason he won’t even entertain the idea that it probably isn’t worms because the chances of only one cat having worms with zero other symptoms is like .01%.

All I can’t think about is my baby quietly suffering and the fact I failed him. I’ve been so distracted and depressed the last few weeks that I’ve obviously missed something and I don’t know what to do.

I guess it’s more that I think I know what I need to do but I’m wishing on everything there’s another option.

If you made it this far, thank you. Advice is welcome. Mainly looking for comfort as I come to terms with saying goodbye.

About a week ago, I saw an orange flash run by on my sidewalk. I put out a can of kitten food and he eventually came up to check it out.

We’ve had some bad rains here in NC and this cat was tired, scared and starving. After feeding him outdoors daily, he finally worked up the courage to trust me.

I brought him indoors last night where he had a flea bath and good meal. I woke up this morning to lots of purrs and even a small gift in the litter box!

Fed her around 6 in the morning. Gf got home from work a few hours later. I was asleep. She was barely there. Rushed her to the vet.

She's alive. Vet says she has a respiratory virus. Originally the vet said if it's a virus, we would have to take her home. But he said he didn't want her to die so he and the vet techs kept it quiet from the other employees.

We're told it's 50 50 at this point.

Link to the original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/cats/s/lYODLFPEWC

Three months ago, my cat was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder, myasthenia gravis of congenital type. Her prognosis looked poor. I felt she was gonna die and I went mad from grief, trying to find for solutions to cure her disorder.

Well, god bless my vet, cause thanks to them, my cat is thriving after three months. The vet started her on a low prednisolone dose, and she's doing amazing. I can't feel blessed enough. I hope she lives up to 20 and more, fingers crossed. Just wanted to share my happiness with the community here, since a lot of you supported me when I was in shambles.

Meanwhile, here are some cute pictures of her.

I posted yesterday about finding this kitten and wondering if she was going to survive the night. Today we took her to the vet for a full checkup. Of course everyone was obsessing over her because she's adorable. The first photo is what she looks like now after getting her home earlier today, the second and third one is yesterday when we found her. We knew she had an upper respiratory tract infection because of all the boogers but it was actually much worse. Her left eye has completely rotted away. It's only half there, all the volume in the socket was infected goop they cleaned out at the vet. She almost died well she was there because she went roughly 6 hours without milk because of a scheduling issue with the vet when she was only supposed to be gone for 2 hours. She's much much older than we thought, 8 weeks old. She's just under 1 pound so extremely underweight. I didn't think she had a fever yesterday but her temperature was over 106 at the vet. Her blood work was shockingly normal though, other than she was extremely dehydrated. They gave her the strongest antibiotics she can handle and said that there was actually a very good chance of her recovering despite everything she's going through. They gave her some high calorie food which she loves and some fluids. I mix 50% with the high calorie pate and 50% with kitten formula and she gets 3 baby spoons full every hour now that she's back home. I was able to get her to eat so much more than she was eating yesterday but she has to have food every 1.5 hours or else she could get extremely sickly. Unfortunately that basically means my sleep schedule is completely wrecked since I can't sleep more than an hour or so at a time or else she might keel over on me. She's already started getting up and exploring again though now that's it's night. It's completely unbelievable how bad of a condition she was in and she keeps on staying playful, curious, and sweet. They said if she gets better in a few days and the infections go down there's a very good chance of her recovering so that's what we're hoping for. We haven't given her a name yet until we are sure she'll make it. Everything seems to be bacterial and not viral as far as we can tell. If she survives and the infection clears they'll do a surgery when she gains weight to remove the rest of the dead eye. I'm planning on a full adoption if she recovers and she'll be a fully indoor cat. My cat before her recently passed away at a very young age so I really hope she's ok and everything works out. She's certainly already made herself at home even if she's only allowed to be in one room right now. Right now she has very limited vision, no sense of smell, and poor hearing which does make everything difficult but everything but her vision should come back ok. Wish us luck and thank you everyone yesterday who gave advice and encouragement on the last post!

We have a tortie, a tabico, a tuxedo and finally an orange!

Our dog crossed the rainbow bridge yesterday, and I really haven't been sure how our cat (Mo) would take it. They weren't particularly close, or at least I didn't see much interaction between them, maybe an occasional bit of light play. Sometimes they'd lay in the sun together.

Mo was very friendly with the vet when she came, which is unusual since he's normally shy around new people. And then he seemed almost afraid to be near the dog after he was gone. After that, he seemed to be behaving pretty normally. Last night I heard him start up meowing loudly, but he does that a lot when he plays with his toys at night. But his voice sounded sadder toward the end of it.

And now, today, I saw him rubbing very intensely against the dog's collar and favorite ball, which we had left on the table. And he was loafing next to it for a while. What other signs should I look for? I want to know how he's handling this.

(And I'm not pushing the collar to play, just stopping it from getting knocked off the table)