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The Empire State Building of cat scratching posts

[Today’s run: 7.1 miles with Boardtown Runners]

Somehow I found myself at PetSmart looking at cat scratching posts, tower thingies.  They had the rope-spiral-covered kind and the carpet kind.  The one that looked interesting was $79.99.  And, how will we know the cat will actually use it?

A woman, a perfect stranger, came around the corner and told us that she bought something much better and much cheaper at Wal-Mart.  (Don’t have to tell me twice!)  So off we went to Wal-Mart.  There we saw no such thing at all.  None.  Zip.

But they did have some pretty cheap carpet pieces.  We got a  3 x 5 piece of carpet for $12.xx.  [And we bought the other stuff that we needed.  Which is why a trip to Wal-Mart always turns into something more than you were intending.  And don’t even get me started about the checkout lines  5 carts long.  We snuck out through the garden center check-out.  Yes, we did pay.]

At home, I put my super-duper carpentry skills to work.  [Power tools..  nail gun.]  I used a very nice cedar post which I inherited from the Winger house last summer.  It was kind of buggy and chewed up on one end.  But all I needed was about 5 feet and that worked out fine.  We made a base from 2 x 4 lumber; put some decking on it; put on our Wal-Mart carpet; put on a shelfy-thing.  The carpet job is not what I would call professional.  But in that regard it matches most of the rest of the carpet in this house.

The base of the thing is nearly 30 inches square.  The cat is checking it out.