Sound familiar? Then you’re going to want to check out Colombia-based company CatLife. Every piece of furniture they sell is designed to make your cat think he’s king of the castle without devoting excessive space to items that only cats can use.

At first glance, each piece looks like normal, stylish, and contemporary human furniture. But look a little closer, and you’ll see cat accommodations built into virtually every nook and cranny. The Ginebra Biblioteca is one awesome example. An open metal frame can be fitted with various wood boxes to display your books, lamps, and trinkets like any other bookshelf, but it also contains cat cubbies, beds, and scratching posts. Best of all, doors on enclosed cubes secure any items you want to keep safe from curious claws.

The Gatrimonial Bed, a play on the Spanish word for cat (gato), is a particularly clever way to please your pets using space that’s often wasted. The wooden platform bed base features an internal labyrinth hidden beneath the mattress. Top panels lift up so you can easily check on your furry friends, and holes in various diameters act as entrances, exits, and ventilation.

If you’d really rather have a normal bed yourself but your cat likes to sleep nearby, the Nochera Nova bedside table is a cute way to keep her close. Made of stained and painted wood, it features a cutout design on the front panel and side access. For the living room, the Isis coffee table offers a similar feature along with a second cubby for your books and remotes.

Cats lying on our laps (or, worse, across our keyboards) can make it hard to work from home. CatLife offers a pretty awesome home office setup to keep cats entertained while you’re trying to focus: the Onix desk, which has a cat bed built into the base. You can buy it alone or add on the pictured accessories to create an entire play landscape with multiple surfaces for scratching, jumping, and napping.

Make use of the wall around the television and your cats will think you’re always keeping an eye on them, even if your gaze is really drawn to the screen. Made of pine wood and glass, the Dalí Entertainment Center has a number of not-so-obvious cat perks built into it, like a feeding and watering station on the lower level and climbable cubbies on the upper shelves.

Ranging from $600 to $3,000 USD, this cat/human furniture doesn’t come cheap, but if you’re ready to splurge on a piece or two for your cat-loving home, there’s good news: they’re all available for shipping to many countries, including the United States.

The post CatLife: Human Furniture That Felines Love, Too first appeared on Dornob.

The iKuddle Auto-Pack Litter Box keeps your cat’s restroom area tidy with very little maintenance on your part, and unlike the vast majority of litter boxes, it’s attractive enough to leave in a visible location. The iKuddle auto-scoops clumps out of the litter and right into a waste bag contained within itself, freeing you from the need to scoop it up every single day.

You don’t even have to fuss with the waste bags anymore. When they’re full, simply press the auto-packing button on the litter box or the accompanying mobile app, and it’ll pack the waste for you. All you have to do is pull it out of the box and throw it away. As if all that wasn’t enough, the self-cleaning litter box will even load a new bag for you, giving you another seven days of use by a single cat until it’s full again. Plus, a built-in deodorizing system using a carbon filter keeps the space feeling fresh and eliminates 80 to 90 percent of odors.

The iKuddle helps look after your cat’s health, too. Its developers explain: “The sensing system monitors how often your feline friend uses the litter box. You’re able to detect if something is wrong by looking at the data on the app and comparing it to how much waste your cat produces. The sensor [also] detects your cat entering and exiting the box. If your cat hops back in during a cleaning, the unit pauses the cycle automatically.”

“iKuddle’s built-in lithium battery (24V, 2200mAh) lasts for two weeks between charges. It also comes with a charging cable that lets you use iKuddle practically anywhere in your home. Unlike other self-cleaning litter boxes, iKuddle’s detachable components, such as the scooper and litter box enclosure, allow for easy cleaning and maintenance.”

If you’ve ever had a self-cleaning litter box before, you know how loud they can be. Cats that are easily startled tend to be afraid of them, and the last thing you want is for your cat to develop an aversion to their litter box. If you’re concerned about the automatic features scaring your cat, you can always disable the auto-scoop action and just press a button on the side of the litter box or activate the scoop from the iKuddle app when your cat’s in another room.

Unsurprisingly, cat owners are pretty excited about this gadget. Within a week of its crowdfunding debut on Kickstarter, the iKuddle raised $655,000 from over 2,000 backers, and that number just keeps ticking up as the campaign continues. If you’re interested in snagging one for yourself, you better do it quick. By backing the project now, you can get $130 off the final retail price of one iKuddle Auto-Pack Litter Box, among many other rewards.

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Our feline friends are decidedly unpretentious about their digs. Give a cat a suitcase full of clothes to lay in, and she’ll purr in thanks (and shed all over it). Offer her a cardboard box, and she’ll be even more content. So most cats probably aren’t going to turn their noses up at ridiculously adorable modern furniture made exactly to scale for their enjoyment.

As part of a new campaign called “craftsman MADE,” which aims to revive the historically successful craft industry of Japan’s Fukuoka prefecture, artisan collective Okawa Kagu used its members’ combined skill sets to produce a line of high quality, beautifully produced feline furniture. These pieces don’t look like typical cat beds, and that’s because they’re actually just tiny versions of each participating craftsperson’s existing furniture designs.

Hiromatsu Wood Work Co. built a pine couch with green upholstery, while Tateno Mokuzai of Onishi Wood Crafts produced a cat bed with a dark wooden frame. The designers infused each piece with the same level of detail they gave to the full-scale versions, taking the time to scratch textures onto the wood by hand to recreate the distressed look of the originals. When you see them side by side, you really get a sense of just how much love and skill was put into the cat-sized pieces.

In a post about the project, 88-year-old designer Yu Watanabe explains how the idea came about. “I was also making furniture for children, and I thought pieces for cats would also be interesting,” he says. Watanabe describes the furniture as “capricious and free-spirited,” just like cats. There were some practical hurdles to climb when designing it, like working around the tiny size of the connectors, but the team still managed to find solutions that preserve the integrity of the full-scale collection.

“Originally the thickness of the board 27 mm is the standard size, but in order to keep designability even in this reduced size it has been adjusted to a thickness of 15 mm,” says Mokuzai. “We are paying attention to this point because thin boards are not easy to warp and hard to produce strength. Also there are no metal fittings that fit this size, so I made it with wood instead. From shavings of wood to crimping, polishing, and assembly, each professional is responsible for manually producing furniture as well as for human furniture.”

The campaign definitely succeeds in putting a spotlight on Japan’s artisanal offerings, and the results are adorable — but the best part might just be all of the miniature items made to go along with the bed and couch in the photo shoot, like the tiny coffee table, cabinet, and potted plant. Can you even handle that level of cuteness?

The post Feline Fine: Japanese Line of Miniature Modern Furniture Made for Cats first appeared on Dornob.

Curiosity may have the added sting of potentially killing cats, but this time, by peering into, then entering, a perfectly shaped and engineered hole, your cat will find itself in an equally engineered tunnel in your table, which leads to another hole. With repeat action, they can go on all day long!

According to Ruan Hao, regarding CATable 1.0: “It is a table for us and a paradise for cats.”

So, just what is the greatest complement to a perfect bookshelf? A perfect table? Impressive, beautiful books? Fabulous flowers in objet d’art vases? Well, why not just add a cat?

There’s only one hole in the table’s surface, so like a rabbit out of a hat, your cat can pop up anytime. As long as your precious laptop, files and documents are arranged at the other side of CATable 1.0, peace will reign and a whole lot of feline fun can go on unimpeded.

This cat furniture is seemingly a bit wonky, a bit wobbly, but its crazy zig-zag legs are actually finely balanced, all in the name of style and cat appeal.

All work-at-home cat owners know it can be hard (and just a bit sad) to reluctantly (and repeatedly) relinquish your cat from your lap and settle down to work. CATable 1.0 gives your cat a little fun time while you work, but you still both get to keep each other company.

She’s going for it! After sizing up which entrance is most fit-for-purpose, your feline can spring up and play all day.

Could there be something in there? Kitty may prowl around in CATable 1.0 to her heart’s content, but you never know what she will find. Maybe this time there’ll be a playmate—or a mouse!

Exhibited at Milan Design Week 2014, CATtable 1.0 is still fascinating, both for cats and for their style-conscious owner, with the dilemma of a job to do and a cat to entertain. However, LYCS wasn’t done yet… CATable 2.0 was just around the corner!

Cat cubes galore can stack in interminable configurations to keep your cat occupied and entertained:

”Last year, we designed CATable 1.0 which provides us with a unique space to share with our kitties. This year, CATable 2.0 is no longer a proper-sized table. It consists of 4 pieces of cubic wooden module in exactly the same size. Each one has a particular path for you cat to stroll, and the “remainder” space can be used up to the cat lover’s own need: you can use them directly as stools, or stack them into tea tables, or even as book shelves. You are participating, designing your own furniture and creating a unique wonderland for your cat.” —LYCS, 2015

Sit on ’em, stack ’em up and use ’em as storage, or just score yourself a heap of cats and watch them have a ball (with not a ball of wool in sight)! CATable 2.0 is a worthy successor to CATable. The perfect investment for cat lovers—and at-home workers—everywhere.

The post Share Fun and Quality Time With Your Cat With Designer Ruan Hao’s CATables first appeared on Dornob.

If you’re the type to avoid purchasing pet furniture because it doesn’t fit into your interior design scheme, you’re probably paying for it in the form of fur all over your Arne Jacobsen chair, or constantly pushing a purring feline off your laptop keyboard. Dedicated cat furniture isn’t exactly known for its pleasing aesthetics, but modern alternatives are becoming easier to find. Take Meyou’s new line of cat cocoons, for example, which are currently up for pre-order on Kickstarter.

The French company has created a range of cozy little cat shelters that look like minimalist sculptural objects, all made of natural materials. The Cube is a woven-cotton sphere set within a cube-shaped frame, while The Ball balances on a slanted wood stand.

Both of these designs offer temptingly scratchable surfaces for cats to sharpen their claws. The cotton balls come folded for easy delivery, are machine-washable and can be purchased separately when they start to show too much wear. Choose from champagne, light grey, ivory or dark grey colors.

The Bed sits at just the right height for a cat to comfortably leap up onto its padded surface and nestle within the 100% wool canopy. Move it around the house so your cat can always be close to you, whether you’re lounging on the couch or working at your desk. See all of the options available at Kickstarter. 

“Since its creation a few years ago, French brand Meyou has been dedicated to creating a range of products that reconcile your cat’s needs with your design expectations. Their creations, which are inspired by Scandinavian design, combine sleek, elegant lines with high-quality, resistant materials, resulting in decorative objects that easily blend in with the rest of your furniture. Revolutionizing the accessories essential to the well-being of your cats, Meyou puts design at their service.”

The post Cat Cocoons: Modern Feline Furniture first appeared on Dornob.

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You know the irritated feeling you get after you buy your feline friend a brand new playhouse, only to find him minutes later playing instead with the box it came in? Dutch company Poopy Cat is making it okay for Mr. Whiskers to play around in boxes by introducing a kitty play system made completely of cardboard boxes.

The system is called Boxes, and it’s basically a set of building blocks for you to play with until you get tired of them – and then your cat can crawl around in them. You can take them apart, rearrange the blocks, and unfold them so you can store them flat in a closet when you need to free up some floor space.

Each piece is made from recycled cardboard that can be recycled again once the playhouse has reached the end of its usable life. The kits contain several different sizes and types of chambers for your cat to play in and tunnels to walk through. An assembled kit sort of looks like a hamster play set with tons of places to hide, sleep, and covertly bat at your legs as you walk by.

Blocks comes packed flat and ready for you to fold together. The cardboard components are super-strong and you can paint or draw on them to personalize them. The Blocks system is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to raise cash for their initial production run, and as of publication time they have raised nearly three times their initial goal.

About Poopy Cat

“Our original Poopy Cat product was born out of a moment of panic and epiphany. After losing my kitten Mushi I had been frantically turning my flat over when I found her inside a bag of cat litter. At that point I realized that the cat saw the litter as its garden, not the tray so why not make the tray disposable?”

“Our litter boxes allow the cosmopolitan cat owner to save themselves, their cat and the environment some dignity. The owner wins by having a disposable litter box with a cat friendly design. There are 10 million cats in the UK, each using an average 30k of litter a year, so it’s the perfect low footprint product.” [via appear here]

The post Make Your Cat’s Dream House with Cardboard Building Blocks first appeared on Dornob.

National organization Architects for Animals put on the ‘Giving Shelter’ event in Los Angeles, displaying all of these fun cat-centric creations, to raise money for the non-profit group Fixnation, which is dedicated to humane trap-neuter-return practices for homeless and stray cats. When the fundraiser is over, these fun modern cat houses are donated to Fixnation so feral felines in need have a fancy new place to live.

Unlike most cat furniture, which tends to be on the low end of the design spectrum, these creations take the needs of cats just as seriously as those of their owners. The pieces range from colorful play tubes by NAC Architecture to a wooden tower with tiered, turf-covered landings by RNL.

The event is held every year, and all designers are invited to build a shelter. The Architects for Animals website also offers a simple guide to creating your own shelter for feral cats that might need a warm place to stay in your neighborhood, too, including some made out of styrofoam shipping boxes.

“Architects for Animals® ‘Giving Shelter’ is an awareness raising initiative. Participating architectural and design firms, as well as individual architects and designers, design build and donate creative outdoor shelters that provide animals with refuge from the elements.  At the events these shelters are put on display to the public and are then donated to organizations who work with needy animals.”

See them all at Architects for Animals.

The post High-End Cat Shelters Made by Architects first appeared on Dornob.

(via: Inthralld)

The post Remodeled House Has Insanely Fun Cat-Centric Interior first appeared on Dornob.

Cat-friendly built-ins are not an entirely new phenomena, but few clients go so far out of their way to include their feline friends not only in their architectural plans but interior photographs as well.

Hey!Cheese is a photography, art and design collective in Taipei, Taiwan – the group managed to fit a cat into most of their shots of these living, dining and kitchen spaces of “Perfect Cat House.”

Some of the structures, like the scratching post, ramps and walls are explicitly cat features – in other instances, cat-friendly sofas and other feline favorites, like laptops, simply make their way into the picture.

But even without the cat involved, the design stands on its own as well – so while a later buyer might be puzzled by the ramping bookshelves, they are also aesthetically interesting enough to work, even without a furry friend playing on them. That, or perhaps a ferret, chinchilla or rat would find them fun as well.

Hey!Cheese Photography did a great job of capturing the coolness of the space, but the creators of this lovely contemporary feline-focused home are actually Thinking Design, a firm based in Taiwan – and of course they should get credit for their great work! This cat friendly house is inspiration for pet lovers all over the world to create their own elevated walkways that blend right in to the sleek interior design.

“Thinking Design was founded in 2012. It undertakes interior and commercial space design planning and integrates the balance of space and function. We provide relevant experience and expertise to implement ideals in practice. We are convinced that decoration is not only about beauty, it is related to space, function, personnel and sustainability. When the design level is transformed into practical requirements, a balance needs to be achieved and the user’s life is better due to the design.”

The post Felines First: Home Design Has Cats in Mind first appeared on Dornob.

A seemingly innocuous candle that reveals a somewhat morbid surprise inside, this trick could lie dormant for days, weeks or years until someone lights it up and realizes what lies beneath.

PyroPets, no doubt knowing the internet will love it, is starting with a cute cat version available via their Kickstarter campaign which they are using to turn this one-off trinket into a mass-produced piece of offbeat decor. Morbid, maybe, but undeniably cute in their own strange way, even in skeletal form.

From its creators: “PyroPet is a family of animal shaped candles that each reveal a surprise within as they burn. The first PyroPet product is a cute little cat called “Kisa”. (“Kisa” means “kitty” in Icelandic). Sweet little kittens are transformed in a fire. Crawling from the ashes come forth grinning metallic devils with sharp claws and fire blazing in their eyes.”

Other versions include dogs, unicorns, reindeer, dragons and more. This one is especially fun:

“You’ve found Einar, the mystical Icelandic Unicorn Candle. Legend holds that he has a heart of gold. We can only vouch for the ribs and spine. Best to check for yourself. Unlike real unicorns, unicorn shaped candles only make most of your dreams come true.”

“Its been about 150 years since candles were vital for light. Now their role is more refined. Their combination of warm low light, scent, and slow transformation make them the solution for communicating the mood. Whether it’s intimacy, festivity, enchantment or elegance – candles say it like nothing else can. 54 Celsius strives to enhance the conversation by bringing you candles that are so beautiful and unique that they can easily transition from a supporting role to the star of the show. We both design our own collections and we share the work of some very talented friends by distributing their candles here in the US and UK.”

The post Pyropets Candles Melt to Reveal Their Own Skeletons first appeared on Dornob.

Curves can be challenging, but inside and out, this dwelling follows through, wrapping up and around to form two stories of semi-continuous space that feels both domestic and dynamic.

In Finnish tradition, wood can be found throughout the home, adding an organic touch that reinforces the curved shape, with concrete and steel playing secondary roles.

Designed by Olavi Koponen and built in Espoo, Finland, the layout proceeds from public to private spaces and balances static rooms with a sense of ongoing movement.

In each space, furniture either floats in the space or is custom-fit to the exterior. This is not an inexpensive proposition, particularly when it comes to built-ins … but it does make everything feel homey and fit-to-purpose.

In plan and elevation, you can see the single major break in the continuous curve, creating a separation for the master suite area, starting with the open-style bathroom and leading into the bedroom.

The post Catlike House: Spiral Shell Home Rests Its Head on Its Tail first appeared on Dornob.

Pets have a way of taking over our lives and our homes – particularly cats, who don’t seem to understand that they are not the lords of the manor. A device called the Cat Crib may help cat owners reclaim their human furniture by giving Whiskers her own special place to sleep that doesn’t take up any extra floor space.

The Cat Crib is a small cloth hammock that attaches to the legs of nearly any four-legged chair or even some small tables. The sleeping space of this clever and affordable piece of pet furniture is suspended beneath the seat of the chair, giving cats a napping spot that is secure and lets them feel like they are hiding.

Kitties like to be in the middle of the action, but they also like to feel safe and snuggly. The feline hammock lets them have both at once, while eliminating the need for huge, unattractive cat hotels in the living room – something that style-conscious pet lovers will find irresistible.

“You treasure your kitty, but the pet furniture you buy makes your living room unsightly and disorderly. Your options are limited and cleaning around your cat’s furnishings is difficult. Buy your Cat Crib (patented) cat hammock today and eliminate that clutter while keeping your furry family member happy!”

“An underchair lair awaits your cat, allowing them to hide at a moment‘s notice while keeping an eye on what‘s going on around them. No more competition for floor space between your belongings and kitty’s. The cat hammock utilizes existing unused space, which just makes sense! Use your existing space and clean around the hammock like you already do. Nothing to pick up or move and it‘s washing machine safe. A truly unique cat hammock gift idea. Your friend and your friend’s cat will thank you!”

The Cat Crib Hammock is just $29 at Amazon, if you want one for your own feline friend.

The post Pampered Pet Hammock Gives Kitties Their Own Special Crib first appeared on Dornob.

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Flat-pack, lightweight, a perfect way to carry your kitty if only it had a hole in the handle – alas, it lacks that little detail for now. Still, that absence doesn’t detract from the lovely simplicity of this peaked-roof design.

It would, for instance, make a great guest home for those with infrequent feline visitors – you can collapse it back down when not in use and button it back up quite easily, too.

This so-called Milk Box from the Chinese company MOISSUE is also made white not just in reference to milk but as a baseline for do-it-yourself decor via drawings or stickers.

The post Pop-Up Milk Carton Cat House Design Would Be Cool Carrier first appeared on Dornob.

There is no question that cat lovers will do just about anything to keep their companion animals happy. In a small living space, though, it is not always easy to give your feline friends the space and toys they crave. Designer Seungji Mun came up with this sofa in an effort to keep domestic kitties happy and active.

The sofa includes regular seats for humans, but it also incorporates a play tunnel for cats. The tunnel, which doubles as a backrest for human sitters, loops behind the human seating area, putting one entrance on the floor and one at the level of the seats. A peek-a-boo hole in the tunnel’s midsection allows you to interact with your cats as they hide and frolic in the tube.

Mun’s cat furniture design came as a reaction to the increasing number of companion animals in Korea. He noticed that furniture is a common ground, something that both the cats and the humans can utilize to their mutual enjoyment. Maybe the future of living with animals includes ridding the house of complicated cat-only and human-only zones in favor of shared furniture all around.

“In our lives many kinds of pet are already recognized as another family and are loved by many people. As time passes, numbers of households raising pets are increasing and now new industry related to pets became one of big markets. After all, pets coexisting with people are establishing themselves as a companion. Companion animals are no longer pets but positioned as companions of people. And in Korea, more than 10 million people are living with pets.”

“For this reason, the living space of humans is shared with a companion animal. Between humans’ and pets’ living space, ’ the furniture’ took the largest and the most important position. We would like to use ‘the furniture’ as a tool to share emotions and feelings with pets. This Cat Tunnel Sofa is to communicate and share feelings with a cat.”

The post Sofa with a Built-In Cat Tunnel first appeared on Dornob.