My daughter Tracey, wanted me to help her with another project. This time I'll be making "Cat Steps". What are cat steps? Well, I'm not sure myself, but this is how Tracey explained to me.

She has two cats, and her husband Jon, has two cats. And once the cats were introduced to each other, they don't get along. This is because cats are very territorial. Now two of the cats live upstairs and the other two live downstairs. When one of the cats uses the stairs, the ones at the other end get pissed, which is normal in the cat world.

However, Tracey did some research and found out if you can introduce some neutral ground, that would help out. So this is where the cat steps come into play. What she wants to do is attach a few steps to the wall, above the handrail for the steps so the cats can traverse up and down the staircase on said steps.

The size she wants them to be are 10" long by 6" wide. I'll be adding some supports to them so they can take the punishment of repeated jumping and landing of the felines. I thought this would be a fun project so this is what I'll be working on this time. Oh, and I'll be making 10 of these steps.

Working With Wood
 

I'm using common pine for the steps and the first thing I did was run all the wood through my thickness planer.
 

Here is what I have so far. The pieces on the right are two different sizes. The far right pieces will be the tops of the steps, and the ones slightly smaller will be under the larger ones, which will get attached to the wall. And last, the 45 degree supports, two per step.
 

Here I'm drilling holes for the supports. This setup worked out nicely because I could flip each piece keeping hole location in the correct location for two of the four screws. Once those were done, I dialed to the next location and repeated the process.
 

I'm drilling holes in the supports here. To make sure all the supports locate in the same place I'm using one of the surfaces of my angle plate to bank against (arrows). Below I'm using a countersink for one of the screws that will help hold the support to the top piece.
 

Here you can see how the supports attach to the top piece. If you look close to the back of the support on the right, you can see two screw holes that hold it to the back piece. Notice the letters/numbers in pencil. I plan on shipping all these pieces unassembled {so the box is smaller) then Tracey can reassemble them. Kinda like IKEA would do.