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We have two cats; Tiger and Nickels. Tiger is my oldest daughter’s kitty and we got her as a young kitten at PetSmart in Kanata, she was part of the Ottawa Humane Society community program. We had visited the main branch but she did not connect with any available cats or kittens. However, on a visit to PetSmart, my daughter fell in love with a kitty immediately and Tiger the kitten was happy to accept her love and come home with us. 

Nickels is my youngest daughter’s kitty. She asked for her kitten a few years later. However, we were not in the dreaded kitten time of the year so I advised her of this but she was not deterred. I gave my mom speech about how it is important to make a connection and that sometimes we need to be patient just as I did for her sister during her kitten search. This time the main branch of the Ottawa Humane Society was where her kitty was but he was not a kitten but about a 2-year-old cat. She made an immediate connection and proudly named him Nickels and brought him home.

Now Tiger is 13 years old and Nickels is about 9. Tiger being the older of the two is starting to show her age a bit but loves to scratch her cat trees. My hubby had made a wonderful area for them some years ago but it was starting to get very worn and Tiger was having some issues with a couple of the features. So I decided it was time for new cat trees and to add some fun decor elements. We had won an awesome cat bed from Black Diamond Cat Trees a while back and found it to be very well made, the cats loved it and it was standing up well to their scratching. So it was an easy choice to purchase from this local company again. I picked out a nice trio of cat trees and 2 wall beds. Some may say I went overboard but hubs would be wrong. 😉 I was looking to give Tiger some lower spaces as well as higher elements that she could easily navigate. And a couple even higher for Nickels if he chose.

They are built to order so there is no instant gratification here but the wait is so worth it! I chose delivery and when they arrived I thought I may have gone overboard.  I stuck to my plan and my oldest daughter and I managed to get them upstairs and then arranged them in the cat’s area much to her surprise. I can be fierce and was determined to get this project going so we got the cat trees where they needed to be!

I had very loose ideas of the mural in my mind and I did do some sketching but I was not committing to them. I love flowers and love drawing them. The little mushroom cat scratching post inspired the flower garden idea. Our kitties do not use this at all. This is purely for our amusement as a fun decor item.

Mural day came! Tea was steeping in my thermos mug, water in my water bottle and all my black paint pens collected! Time to get to work! I first found the studs about where I thought we would install the wall cat beds and marked them with chalk. Then I did a loose chalk sketch. Chalk is a great sketching material and I simply took a damp cloth and wiped away any lines I did not want. Once I was satisfied with the chalk sketch I lightly took away some of the chalk with a paper towel so that the paint markers did not get too jammed up with chalk dust. It still happened now and then but that was easily solved with a damp paper towel and a reload of the marker tip.