My Cat From Hell, Jackson Galaxy, Kate Benjamin Catification, Kashmir & Darla

You may have caught the recent episode of Animal Planet’s My Cat From Hell with Jackson Galaxy, where I made a guest appearance helping to Catify Brenda & Dean’s home for their two cats, Kashmir and Darla. I wanted to give you a few more details about what we did to create Darla’s superhighway.

My Cat From Hell, Jackson Galaxy, Kate Benjamin Catification, Kashmir & Darla

During Jackson’s first visit, he identified that Darla is definitely a tree dweller, meaning that she likes to climb to high places, especially when Kashmir (who stays primarily on the ground) on is the hunt. Brenda and Dean’s place also had a lot of dead ends where Kashmir could easily trap Darla. We needed to give Darla a way to climb up and out of the way, allowing her to traverse the space without being trapped.

My Cat From Hell, Jackson Galaxy, Kate Benjamin Catification, Kashmir & Darla

We focused primarily on the dining room, first de-cluttering the area by adding a sideboard that provides streamlined storage and a cat-friendly surface on top. Above the sideboard, we hung several cat shelves and topped them with carpet pieces held in place with double sided carpet tape. As you can see, Darla is quite pleased with her shelves.

To allow easy access to the top of the sidebar and the shelves, we added a cat tree using the Ikea Stolmen pole and step shelves from ContempoCat. This type of cat tree is perfect for Brenda and Dean’s space, since it’s light and airy and requires very little floor space.

My Cat From Hell, Jackson Galaxy, Kate Benjamin Catification, Kashmir & Darla

To add more lanes to Darla’s superhighway, as well as a bit of a hideaway, I created two climbing tubes using simple cardboard cement tubes painted shiny red and trimmed with black faux fur. We placed a strip of sisal inside for comfort and attached the tubes to the wall with two straps. Darla loves her new climbing tubes!

My Cat From Hell, Jackson Galaxy, Kate Benjamin Catification, Kashmir & Darla

One of the fun things about this design that you didn’t hear about on the show, is that all of the artwork we integrated into the climbing wall is original artwork by Brenda. Including personal touches like this can really customize your cat climbing wall, making it not just utilitarian, but also something for everyone to enjoy.

My Cat From Hell, Jackson Galaxy, Kate Benjamin Catification, Kashmir & Darla

Darla’s superhighway actually extends all the way into the kitchen. This is an important feature because it allows access to the climbing wall from two different parts of the house. Since space was limited in the kitchen and we knew that Darla could easily climb a pole (Brenda and Dean had seen her do it before), I created a floor-to-ceiling scratching/climbing post using another Ikea Stolmen pole wrapped with extra thick sisal rope (available at Home Depot). Darla can easily scale the pole to reach the top shelf, then navigate across the climbing wall into the living room, avoiding the ambushes that used to happen on the floor.

Darla’s new superhighway provides her with alternates route and a way to climb up to where she can get away from Kashmir as needed, bringing peace to Brenda and Dean’s home and hopefully keeping both the humans and the felines happy for years to come.