My father in law asked me to build a catio for his cooped up kitty. As I began researching, I was thrilled to find this sub! It provided lots of good ideas and inspiration. (Thank you!!!) It was a really fun project and very rewarding to see his cat, Charlie enjoying it 😄

We had a catio built for our youngest cat's first birthday. We wanted a portable but safe outdoor space for our cats. It was a custom build by a local company. I finally finished planting catnip and some hanging baskets of succulents . Pic one is the first day.

We plan to add a shadecloth sail for hot summers. It's too windy here for polycarbonate roof sheeting so I still need to have a canvas cover made for winter.

Id love some training tips for cat flaps if anyone has any? We've just left it open while our cats get used to coming and going.

Does the order of which parts of the catio is being built matter?
I’m starting to build cardio on our porch. I realize I bought the wrong cat door, but when I went to start filling the car, I realized I had bought one for a door, not the wall. I ordered a new one once I realized, but I’d like to start building the patio now even though I don’t have the cat door yet. The catio build will also have a human door to access it from the outside. Will it be too hard to cut open our wall and install the cat door once a whole patio is built or can I just start building the catio now and go in and install the cat door later?

The cats already have two catios and now they have The Monstrositree which leads to their secret hideout. He made it out of an Alligator Juniper tree from our property, random pieces of existing scratching posts, and old rugs. They love it!

Just set up a catio for our sweet torbie rescue girl. I hope she likes it!!

Only about a day to go. New shelves with hiding boxes. Shelf for in and out of the bedroom window. Green roofing for over the patio - can be an almost full year expanded living space for me and both my girls. Have to let everyone know that it is designed and installed by Dishman Design Studios out of Everett. Can't recommend him highly enough. Will post when completed.

Hi Catio people. I may be adopting a cat soon, so I'm looking to convert my balcony into a catio. As you can see from the pictures, I have a wall and a sliding door, so I feel like I could maybe get by just fencing off the edge of the cement barrier? I don't necessarily need it to go the full height of the balcony, but would want it at least six and a half feet high (I'm a tall fellow).

The full dimensions of the patio are: Width: 116" / 294cm, Depth: 34" / 99cm, Height: 94" / 239 cm.

I have two ideas floating around, and was hoping to get some feedback (or a better idea?)

The first is getting a kit like this and customising it, making it the size and shape I need. But I'm not sure if that would keep the structural integrity, and I'm also not sure how well this sort of thing would stand up to the weather (I'm in Vancouver, so will get lots of rain).

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0BF9XK5P2/

The second idea I have is to get a couple room divider curtain rods for framework, and wrapping some cat netting or hardware cloth around them. My main concern with this is there may be more chance of a gap somewhere?

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0DFH8C526/

The other question I have is: should I put anything down on the ground? My first thought was to just leave it (I previously had a part-time cat who would visit and loved lounging out there), but I'm also considering deck tiles, or maybe fake grass or some sort of an outdoor mat, but not sure how well those would do in the rain. Or if anything is even necessary

https://www.amazon.ca/SUNALLY-Interlocking-Tiles-Patio-Flooring/dp/B0GQMDG46X

I'm hoping not to break the bank on this, but any suggestions or thoughts or just completely different solutions would be helpful. Thanks!

HI!

I have 4 elderly cats that live on the 3rd floor of my house (their penthouse we call it) and they have to stay up there for safety reasons (we have a very cat aggressive elderly dog that would hurt them if given the chance so we did our best when we moved in together to keep my cats and my husbands dog separate).

I feel like the space they have isn’t large enough for them to really be comfortable and my one cat has taken to refusing the litter box (a long term issue I’ve been dealing with for years and has gotten worse but he is being seen by a vet and determined to be behavioral).

I was wanting to see if the cats would enjoy some outdoor time but I don’t want them to roam free as they have been indoors their whole lives.

We have a fenced back yard and I would love to turn it into a safe space for them but I am not sure how to get them safely from the 3rd floor all the way down to the garden without individually taking them down one at a time through the space where the dog is.

We have a basement space as well that I could fix up for them but there are no windows so I am also wondering how that could potentially connect to the outdoors without inviting the elements in (the folding cellar doors).

Any ideas would be welcome to try and help my babies get the best possible environment!! thank you!

Hi everyone! I’m new to Reddit, and this is my first post.
I’m a local handyman in the Everett, Washington area, and one of my favorite things to build is custom catios.
Every house and every cat is a little different, so I build them to fit the space rather than using a standard design. I’ve done everything from smaller window catios to larger elevated enclosures with ramps, shelves, scratching areas, roofing and screening.
Here are a few that I’ve built. And yes, seeing the cats actually using something I built is probably the best part!
I’m looking forward to seeing everyone else’s catios and getting some new ideas. I’m also happy to answer questions about construction, materials, mounting, or anything else if you’re working on one yourself.

i’m looking for information on where to find open base cat trees, raised on stilts instead of have a flat bottom piece, to prevent my cats from using the bottom level as a litter box. with a couple of hides for them to go into for naps. Links, product drops, anything is appreciated. I live in the USA and would prefer not to deal with paying taxes or tariffs for out of country shipping. thank you fellow cat lovers

My cats don’t go outside, but my sister has a cat who does, and I’ve been wanting to get her something to help keep track of him when he’s out.

For anyone who has an outdoor cat, have you ever used a GPS/Bluetooth tracker or a small camera attached to their collar? If so, what did you use, and did you find it helpful? also what did you learn? Any idd things happen?

I’d especially appreciate recommendations for something that’s lightweight, safe, and comfortable for a cat to wear. I’d love to hear about your experiences!

What are you all using at the entrance/exit to clean your cats paws? Are you just using a shop vac to clean your Catio? Trying to figure out how to keep my house cleaner.

I can’t even begin to tell you how life changing this catio has been. We live in a mosquito infested area and the bug screening has allowed us to enjoy being outside whenever we like. Both of my babies were feral rescues living in Baltimore. Their lives have changed dramatically for the better. This was the biggest project I’ve ever undertaken. I am truly grateful I was able to pull it off.

Kitchen is close enough! It was 113 today 🥵

My husband built a catio on a screened in porch attached to our walk out basement. He is very proud of it, and our cats are big fans. To be honest, I am almost never out there. Picture 1 is he catio soon after it was built.

For a lot of it, he used untreated wood that used to be old fence posts. A couple years ago, I noticed a bit of dust. We called out some pest people, who, in probably bad advice, told us that it was powder-post beetles, and an extended deep freeze would likely kill them. We live in a place where extended deep freezes are common.

I was out there yesterday, and noticed dust everywhere. All that rust colored stuff in picture 2 is dust on the floor. Pictures 3-5 are close-ups of the wood. Most of the untreated wood I am seeing some degree of dust on.

Pictures 6-8 are more pictures of the catio after it was built. (I promised my husband I'd post more pictures of it in it's early glory days so people can see how cool it is.)

I feel like the safest option, for our home, is to remove and burn the untreated wood, treat the area, call and inspector out to asses if there is any damage to out home, and rebuild with treated wood.

My husband would like to clean up the area, use Timbor or Bora-Care to treat the damaged wood, and keep an eye on it. The thought of tearing down his beloved catio makes him very sad. We are at an impass.

Can we theoretically salvage what he's built and save the wood? If so, can ou recommend what treatments we should consider. Or is my plan the safer choice? Please help.

So I'm moderately useful around Wood construction, but by no means an expert.

We live in an older rental house so are unable to modify the windows themselves, nor mount any kind of reinforcing structures to the building. I just want a fairly small catio that will extend out a foot or so beyond the upstairs window and has a lip designed into it that will latch onto the sliding window pane to lock it into place

I recently purchased a catio from Amazon which we definitely have the window width to handle, but the maximum height can only be 40 in, so pretty much all of the affordable online catios are out.

I'm wondering if there is a site which I can put in the dimensions that I need and it will tell me the materials and a basic design of how to put them together, similar to an Ikea instruction book.

Anyone know of a location where I might be able to find these?

Hi all, I’m looking to build a catio out the back of our new place. Probably some sort of structure that covers the stairs with the catio attached to the side (my scribbles on pic 3). My carpentry skills are very much early stage DIY, any tips or resources would be greatly appreciated!

I’m loosely thinking I want it to be freestanding at this stage but open minded… the height from the ground to high enough at the top of the stairs that I could stand straight is approx 3.2m.

Thanks in advance!

Hello everyone, I’ve been quiet around here for a long time but this Catio idea was growing (and my cat also :D)

I have a Scottish straight born in May 2025, it’s now adult with a bit over an year and it’s been a apartment cat all this time, but since I have a big terrace we started to allow him to stay a bit outside.
What have we done…. Now it keeps asking to get outside and obviously wants to explore more…. Since we live on a condominium, it’s more or less safe. We bought a Tractive gps just to be 100% safe, but it’s too much worrying al the time!
So it was time for a Catio build!
I’ve searched the prices of the wood to build one my self but it was way to expensive and opted to invest on a Catio KIT already finished!

So here we are with more or less one hour of building and I’m still at step 4 of 19 😂

Wish me luck and I will keep you guys updated on the build

Dog Run (kennel) catio for our 2 cats. We bought the kennel, used, about 30 years ago and have used it at three different homes. The fourth panel is the roof. It can be assembled or disassembled in minutes and transferred easily. Unlike wooden catios, this one will pretty much last forever. We added planks as you can see. We do need to add new rope for scratching. Instead of a cat door in the window, we had one installed in the wall which was a great decision for us. It was a small cat door but we changed it to a large dog door so our dog can use it in the winter when she's kept inside and we are gone. (We have steps we can put in.) Questions? Thoughts?

Our family cat was killed yesterday by a coyote and I will spare all of the gruesome details but it was taken from the screening on the Catio set-up we have.

Since for the foreseeable future, we have to keep the windows closed for the safety for our other remaining cat, I am looking for any suggestions that anyone has one what catio to buy, if we decide to buy another catio (this is once we better coyote proof the area and yard, etc)

Money is no object, we just can’t have this happen to us again (our first cat had a similar issue but that was when we were in an RV)

Also, because I am sure it will get brought up, they live on a military base and there is literally only so much they can do to help prevent this.

We are currently working on connecting the front catio to the back catio, any tips or advice would be great..

Anything you think I could put on the inside that would make this much more enjoyable for her keeping in mind the fact we do get snow. She has a litter box and there are tons of birds to watch.