A few years ago we started our cat furniture company, CatastrophiCreations. One of our main goals is keeping cats' minds active by enriching their environment, which helps with a multitude of behavior problems. The first piece we ever built, and our cats' favorite piece, was an Indiana Jones style cat bridge.
My sister Kate is an animal behavior specialist, and works with exotic animal rescues. She is constantly trying to find creative ways to keep the animals’ lives enriched, much like we do with house cats. We thought it would be a great idea to translate what we do to what Kate does, and build one of our bridges on a much larger scale. We began researching well-accredited animal sanctuaries we could make a donation to.
Black Pine Animal Sanctuary is an animal rescue that saves a lot of animals from circuses, zoos, and private owners who got in over their heads. Black Pine doesn’t declaw their cats, and they don't breed the animals, to keep new animals from being born into in captivity. They also don’t make the mistake of allowing any public in direct contact with the animals, although people are welcome to visit and observe. All of their animals live at the sanctuary for the rest of their lives.
We were thrilled to hear that our giant cat bridge idea was something Black Pine was into as well. We worked with Lori and Amy, who were incredibly kind and welcoming. They showed us around the sanctuary and brought us to one of the tiger enclosures they had in mind, which housed Top Cat and Millie. Both of these tigers are four years old; Millie is a beautiful Indo-Chinese and Top Cat is a handsome Sumatran. With both of the tigers being young and having a high energy level, we thought they would be a perfect fit for our bridge.
We documented the process of building and installing the platforms to share. Huge thanks to everybody who helped out and to the folks at Black Pine Animal Sanctuary. Extra big thanks to Amy, who stayed late a couple days to let us finish up the construction. This was such an amazing experience.
More info: catastrophicreations.com
