We’ve featured cat ladders and manual cat lifts here on The Cat’s Meow, so the natural progression is to show you a fully functional automatic cat elevator.

According to its German inventor, the elevator is fully operated by the cat. The cabin is fitted with an infrared catflap, so only your domestic cat has access.

The lift is sensor activated and starts automatically with a delay of a few seconds. The cat only has to enter and the elevator takes care of the rest.

He’s working on developing another solution with an RFID chip that will recognize more than one cat and transport it to the correct floor.

How’d he train the cat to use it?

Before installation he feeds the cat inside the cabin, so she got used to the procedure of stepping in and out. When the lift was installed he put some food inside, and the cat stepped inside. It didn’t take long for the cat to figure out that this was the most expedient (and coolest) way to reach the garden.

I ran across these photos at AcidCow.com which appeared without text explanation. This is sort of Malibu Barbie Dream House for cats. It’s not as artful as Bob Walker and Frances Mooney’s iconic cat house, but I don’t think these cats mind — the shelves get a lot of play.

If you have several cats in your home, you might consider adding a few shelves to your walls. When we toured the animal research facility at Iams/Eukanuba where the cats are housed in a cage-free environment (with LOTS of cat shelves and hammocks), the behaviorist explained that the high shelves give the cats who are the lowest in the social hierarchy somewhere to get away from the alpha cats. The alpha cats stay low, and the cats who are lowest in the pecking order climb onto the highest shelves. Everyone’s happy. If you have problems with cats getting along in a multi-cat household, shelves might offer some relief.

If these don’t quite fit in with your design sensibilities, moderncat is a great resource for artful, aesthetically pleasing cat shelf designs. Check ‘em out. The Walker/Mooney book, The Cat’s House, is also an inspiration.

[LINK: Acidcow.com]

Don’t forget! You can leave a comment on this post for an entry in The Cat’s Meow’s giveaway of a custom oil painting of your cat by Linden Alley.

Our former home in the desert had stables, which we insulated. We poured concrete in one, the “dining hall”, and in the other, we installed “boat-deck” outdoor carpeting. We built elevated sleeping quarters which affixed to the walls, and to access these, we built little ramp ladders, which you can see in the photos. We’d rescued “community cats” in our PREVIOUS neighborhood, and were able to have our in-house clowder plus our “stables crew,” who enjoyed the two stables plus a cat-fenced outdoor compound. Indoors and outdoors were climate-controlled, with a portable swamp cooler, an oil heater, and a mister for the yard.

And here are the ladders, which lead to the elevated sleeping quarters. How cool is that??

Thanks for sharing, Rani!

I’d never seen a cat ladder before I stumbled upon the Cat Ladder blog which features cat ladders from around the world. It’s a Euro-centric site; very few of the photos are from the U.S. Perhaps too many cat burglars in the U.S. view the outdoor ladders as welcome mats.

It’s a facinating site to browse. There are a gazillion different permutations of the basic concept, which is a narrow, stepped structure leading from an upper floor window or cat door onto the ground below. Who knew there could be such variety? I’ve pulled a few of the more interesting contraptions to share with you.

Some of the ladders are affixed to the sides of buildings, and this sort of herringbone pattern is popular:

For hundreds more cat ladder photos, drop by the Cat Ladder blog!

Do you have a cat ladder (and a photo you’d like to share?) Leave a comment!