Catios are a growing trend and we’re delighted to share a guest post from Yasaar Nakchbendi, the founder of Chirpy Cats. Four Season Catio Fun includes her DIY instructions for creating a basic catio. To create her magical, herbal wonderland takes imagination and a green thumb.

When I discovered Yasaar lived in Montreal, Canada (my hometown), it got me thinking about using catios for all four seasons, even in a Canadian winter. Not all cats like snow but many do. It’s time to think about adding four season enrichment for cats. During colder weather, catios can have heating pads, cozy wool cat caves or blankets and some cats may enjoy wearing a sweater. Placing a bird feeder nearby will help hungry birds and provide live bird TV.

If you have a catio, we’d love to hear about your suggestions. If you’re dreaming of a catio, how would you purrsonalize it?

A catio is the perfect safe haven for your cats to enjoy the great outdoors in a changing environment. It can help to relieve boredom in indoor cats as well as restore peace and harmony in a multi-cat household.

It’s crowded in here, I need some space

As a child I hated sitting shoulder to shoulder flanked between my brother and sisters on long road trips. I felt like my personal bubble was violated and I felt smothered, barely able to breathe with me squashed in the middle. I smile as I think back on how I whined when my brother’s shoulder just brushed against mine. How fitting that I had these cat-like traits! To be a happy camper, I needed my own space. This is essentially what it means to be a cat, to own their little space ‘bubble’ in order to thrive and be happy. Cats are brought into a home from various backgrounds and are expected to live together in close proximity and just magically sort out their differences. While cats are very social animals and love their human company, the feeling is not so cut and dry when it comes to the delicate relationships with their feline housemates. When it becomes too crowded from a certain cat’s point of view the balance is upset which can open the door to stress.

For cats living in a multi-cat home, having access to time-sharing spaces at certain times of the day is vital to their well-being, but often neglected as an afterthought. A catio is the perfect solution to expanding your cats’ territory to the great outdoors, within a safe haven, where they can each find their niche, their safe bubble, away from the resident bully cat or ambusher cat. Even the smallest balcony extension for your cat is a huge step towards feline environment enrichment and can help to restore harmony between rival cats. With the arrival of our cat Charlie, our loner cat George, became quite withdrawn. Just by increasing the size of the territory for all cats by building a catio, George now struts around with renewed confidence and spirit. Below, I share some fun features that can be incorporated into your catio design to create perfect Zen for both you and your cats.

Tunnel vision is a good thing

The catio tunnel is by far one of my favourite features of a catio. A tunnel adds extra space for your multi-cat crew without being too intrusive or taking up too much space. It’s a feature that can discreetly merge with your existing garden and be spruced up with cat safe plants and flowers.

The catnip tunnel

A ground tunnel that weaves it’s way through foliage is ideal for ground-dwelling cats who love to bug hunt and snack on plants. You can dedicate a section of your herb garden for a tunnel that can be flanked on either side by rows of cat safe plants such as catmint, catnip and trailing nasturtiums. This way the foliage forms a jungle-like canopy over the tunnel, the perfect hideout for cats to express their inner leopard. A catnip tunnel is sure to be one of the hotspots on a cat’s to-do list. Plan your tunnel layout so that it leads to somewhere, whether it’s into another large catio area or back inside the house. Escape routes are vital to be able to get away from sneaky ambushers lurking around corners.

Catnip planted along the outside of the tunnel puts it at zero risk of being totally annihilated by voracious catnippers, but still gives them access to every bit of catnip lusciousness! What’s great about catnip is that it keeps going right up until the first frosts begin and every year it comes back for cat-snacking pleasure. It’s also a natural flea and mosquito repellent.

Editor’s note: Catios do not offer protection against fleas, ticks, spiders, bees, insects (flying or crawling). Sometimes small prey can wander in and be caught i.e. mice, chipmunks, snakes or birds. Sophie the model demonstrates. Catios with fine screens will keep creatures out but they aren’t as appealing or safe. A black bear can tear through porch screening. When building a catio, consider the location and regional wildlife for four seasons of safe fun.

The elevated tunnel

An elevated tunnel is a great feature that can be added to an existing catio. It creates even more time sharing spaces for ’tree-dwelling’ cats and provides a separate platform for bird and squirrel watching and sunbathing. Again, make sure your tunnel leads into another space as you want to avoid cat pile-ups! Our elevated tunnel meets in the middle into a ‘central station’ which has three exits.

Let’s go green!

Tall plants and vines such as giant sunflowers, honeysuckle or silver vine are perfect to beautify the perimeter of your catio and tunnels. Cats are attracted to silver vine (actinidia polygama or actinidia kolomikta) and honeysuckle (lonicera tartarica) all of which double as ‘curtains’ providing dappled shade for afternoon catnaps. A catio does not have to look like a cage and vines are a great camouflage.

A catio for all seasons

If you have cats that love to cavort in the snow, giving them access to the catio in winter is actually quite fun. I will never understand what drives a cat from the cosiness of the fireplace to the snow outside. But cats will be cats. No need to overwinter all your potted plants. Leave out large barrels of tall grass piled up with leaves. This provides an interesting bed right up into Spring. I also leave out some dry and withered stalks of catnip in the hanging baskets. Apparently freeze dried catnip in winter is quite a treat, according to Ollie and Jimmy!

Elevated condos

I call this feature a home away from home. These condos are enclosed spaces within the catio and they are like permanent boxes that any cat will love. Our cats play musical chairs boxes all day long in these condos which are built at various levels of the catio, leading onto open highways. In addition to getting their box fix, the condos also provide shelter from sudden downpours in summer and from snow in winter.

These catio hideaways won’t suddenly turn your pariah cat (like George) into the life of the party or win him friends. Neither will it make him eager to rub shoulders with his nemesis. But rest assured, he will be happy knowing that at four in the afternoon, the little condo nook on the catio highway is his for two hours and that, to him, is priceless. Happy cats equals a happy you.

Visit how to build your cats’ dream catio for some tips on getting started with the basics.

Author Bio

Yasaar Nakchbendi has carved her little corner on the web at Chirpycats.com where she expresses her love for all things feline, with a special focus on cat environment enrichment and gardening for cats. She makes miniature sculptures of her cats from her homemade cold porcelain clay, creates whimsical illustrations and gets her inspiration from writing haiku about her cats, of course!

Yasaar’s cats inspire her clever and whimsical illustrations. You can see more on her Instagram feed. This is one of our favorites and do read the fine print 😉

Follow the Chirpy Cats’ antics on Facebook Twitter, and Instagram @chirpycats