We’re Building a Catio That Doesn’t Attach to the House (Part One)

I think I can officially say our home is overrun with cats. We rescued three “ferals” from my husband’s work back in October 2025 in the hopes of socializing them and eventually adopting out all three. While Arnold, a once semi-feral cat, has come around and proven to be the sweetest lap cat, the two kittens, Riley and Reese, have been more resistant to our efforts. As a result, they will be staying with us, while Arnold will be looking for his forever family.

Semi-feral brothers, Riley and Reese, at about 7 months old.

Riley and Reese can’t live in our foster room forever, so we’ve made the decision to acclimate them to our backyard in the spring. I’m not a fan of having cats outside. While we don’t have the space to build a grand catio to provide a safe place for the cats to live out their lives, we can put in the effort to train them to come into the catio in the evenings and spend their nights there.

The catio isn’t finished yet, but Eddie has already given it his stamp of approval.

With that in mind, we plan to make them the most amazing catio we can on our little patio. We’ve built some small projects in the past, so designing and building a project of this scale has been quite the challenge for us. There will be no tutorial video, as we’ve been figuring it out as we go, but I will create a catio tour video once the project is complete. The hard work has been totally worth it as one local catio company stated on their website that they have a $6,000 minimum and our tiny little porch would cost $8,000 for a basic catio from them. By doing the work ourselves, we are saving thousands of dollars!

As of right now, we have completed the outer frame. We did not want something that would need to be attached and damage the house. We were inspired by a design shared on a Facebook catio group from a user with the same concern. She had her catio professionally built and the contractor used these heavy duty leveling feet.

Supplies:

• 2x4 Untreated Lumber

• 1x4 Untreated Lumber (for door)

• Exterior Paint

• Heavy Duty Leveling Feet

• 1/2 inch Hardware Cloth

• Miter Saw

• Staple Gun

• Pocket Hole Jig

• Pocket Hole Screws

• Door Hinges

• Gate Latch

We will be working on the interior next. We recently had our tree trimmed, and we have two large limbs drying out in the garage. We plan to debark them and create a cat tree for climbing. We will also be adding a bench that will double as seating for us humans and a shelter for the cats, as well as a hiding place for their litter box. We hope to have this project complete by early March, but for now, our cats seem to be enjoying the catio as is.