Cat Bowl Stand

So, I have a cat. Because I live in an apartment, I decided to get a pet, and went with a cat instead of a dog because cats can be litter box trained. Dogs need to be walked, and all that fancy jazz. Anyway, after having her for a couple months, Tess started barfing regularly. After some research I learned that all cats belong to one of three categories. 1 - they do the hairball thing. 2 - they barf. 3 - they do neither, and you're super lucky. Well, my cat is a barf machine. There wasn't a week that went by without my returning home from work to find a large floor present of the unwelcome kind on my carpet. So, I'd clean it up and get on with things. I even got a steam carpet cleaner from my parents for a holiday present a few years back, so the cleanup was even easier. I also (through trial and error) found a kind of cat food (Purina Sensitive Stomach) that made it so she only barfed once every 2-3 weeks. Then I read somewhere (wish I could remember where) that a common cause of feline vomiting is from bending all the way down to the ground to get at their food/water bowls, and that if those bowls are raised up an inch or two, their digestive systems function amazingly better.

Since I'm in a big DIY period of my life (and also because the bowl stands I saw in stores were butt-ugly), I decided I could make a stand for Tess' bowls, and see if it made a difference in her vomit regularity. Even if it didn't, it would mean that she couldn't shove her bowls around on my carpet and spill water and/or food quite so easily, so it was a win-win scenario for me. And thus, I was off to begin working! But first, a picture of the recipient of this project.

My procedure for this was pretty easy, as all I had to do was take some measurements of the bowl dimensions, and decide how high I wanted them off the ground. With that done, I turned to my dad, who has tons of scrap wood lying around the house (why? no idea). What I ultimately used was a big piece of particleboard covered in formica.

It might be a bit hard to make out the specifics, but I took my dad's large L-square and drew out the dimensions of each piece right onto the formica top in pencil. The two paper cut-outs are sized for the eventual holes the bowls will sit in. I'm not good at freehanding circles. With the dimensions laid out, it was cutting time.

At this point I've cut out each "leg" of the stand, and I'm currently using the band saw to cut around the circle lines I drew out with the paper markers. It's easier than you might think, you just drill through the wood with a large bit (I used a 1/2") and then start cutting from that point. The saw can make turns quite easily, and then it's just a matter of following the lines.

This is what one of the legs looks like. The other leg looks exactly the same. Fancy that, right?

Oh look, big hole cut-outs! I wonder where they came from...

And now we see the bowl stand in all of its unfinished glory. The pieces have been cut out, but that's it. Very rough, and with the formica still covering most of the surfaces, gluing them together wouldn't work very well.

So, at this point what I did was clamp the two legs together in an attempt to make them as identical as possible. With them clamped together I went over all the edges to do just that. Lots of sanding time, essential for any project.

With the legs matching up a bit better, I took all of the pieces outside with the belt sander, and removed the formica. It didn't take all that long, but my methodology wasn't perfect, and so some places on the top had peaks and valleys from a lack of uniform sanding. You can't see it, but they're painfully obvious to the touch. Regardless, the stand is pretty much done at this point. All I had to do now was use some wood glue to attach the legs, and it was showtime!

It took Tess a little bit of time to get used to eating out of it, but she adapted quickly. Perhaps more importantly, since I completed this prototype and started using it back in November/December of 2010, from then until now (June 3rd, 2011) Tess has barfed exactly ONCE. So I'd say either she a) grew out of barfing as a natural part of growing older, or b) the bowl stand has done exactly what I wanted, and brought the vomit occurence rate as close to zero as I could have wanted.

So, there are a few problems with the design. First, because the ends are uncovered, Tess can sometimes knock a toy underneath the stand, and I've had a few annoying moments where, in an attempt to get at the toy, she will knock the water bowl out of the stand and onto my carpet. Second, it's not very pretty. I'm not really into aesthetics as a general philosophy, but with the peaks and valleys in the top piece, as well as the unfinished wood look, I'll probably want to revisit this project at some point. Third and finally, Tess is a very messy drinker. I know, I know, cats are supposed to be very clean creatures and all that. Mine isn't. She constantly gets water out of the bowl while she's drinking, and I know that over the long haul, that will eat away at the wood, causing warping and overall structural instability. So what does all this mean? Mostly just that this project is only finished "for now" and will have to be revisited in the future to fix some of these problems. But for now, this prototype works amazingly well and I couldn't be happier.