Archive for the ‘pet projects’ Category

Last week Sarah posted about a new line of ceramic and stainless steel pet fountains that are a bit more décor friendly than your average fair. I was thisclose to throwing down for one, but that $50-60 price tag made me hold off. We run a tight ship here, so spending that kind a scratch on a pet item requires a lot of forethought. While I mulled it over I thought I’d check to see if there was a DIY solution. Lo and behold, I found a great tutorial by Instructables’ user Dirkus.

The project entails installing a small aquarium water filter (about $13) on the edge of a large water bowl. Super easy right?

Assemble the water filter and hang it on the edge of the bowl as you would with an aquarium. Use small pieces of wood or plastic to shimmy between the filter and bowl in order to insure the filter is as level as possible. Fill the bowl with water, covering the bottom of the filter’s intake tube, plug it in, and power it up! While it’s not a high design solution, I do like that it’s a pretty minimal addition to a stainless steel bowl.

Thanks for letting us share Dirkus!

I have a ridiculous amount of photos of my pets. It’s gotten worse since purchasing a dSLR camera. There isn’t a moment I haven’t convinced myself isn’t the perfect Kodak moment. Unfortunately, I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to do with all these images. Sure, I share them in the Pawesome Flickr pool and include them in posts here on the site, but what about when I want to enjoy my digital snapshots in the analog world?

I recently got a chance to test out a few printing services for a New York Times story on the very subject. While testing, I found that each provided a great tool for those looking for creative ways to display snaps of their pets. After the jump, a look at a few of my favorite photo printing services for pets!

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I recently invested in an automatic pet feeder for my cats. I got it so that I could more comfortably take off for the weekend and not worry about my cats binging on (and then purging) the food I’ve left out. I originally thought it would only be used when we headed out of town, but it’s become a main attraction here at the house. The problem is that it can only handle dry food, so I still have to open up stinky cans of food (or bags of raw food) once a day when I’m here. So now I’m looking for a cat-loving engineer who wants to make me a soft food dispenser using an old VCR.

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One of the big challenges for pet owners with indoor-only animals is keeping them mentally engaged and stimulated. I know I face this problem with my kitty. The apartment is her tiny kingdom, and she is like its fat tyrant, drunk with power. She has grown indolent and unmotivated, and her subjects both love and fear her. But her life is, by all accounts, sort of boring.

It’s not that she doesn’t want more. She loves attention and stimulation and is at us to play and interact as soon as we walk in the door — then she’ll chase her cork toy or talk to us for as long as we’re willing. So how can we keep things interesting for her while we’re away?

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After posting about Sustainable Pet Design’s gorgeous green roof dog houses on ReadyMade’s Inside & Out blog , I wondered if there was a way to build a green roof on any old dog house. Thanks to the folks at ReadyMade I got the opportunity to get the scoop from Sustainable Pet Design‘s Stephanie Rubin.

Full instructions on how to add a beautiful garden atop your dog’s standard outdoor home can be found in the August/September issue of ReadyMade and online.

Image: Scott Little for ReadyMade

I love a good DIY project as much as the next aspirational crafter. I prefer projects that don’t necessarily require a lot of skill (as evidenced by the cat bed I made earlier this year) because I’m not very intuitive or handy about these things. Also, this way I’m not disappointed when they don’t turn out perfectly.

While we tend to focus on  DIY projects for our own pets, critters like feral cats — who mostly live outside in colonies — also need creature comforts. Any animal that spends time outside  needs access to shelter, no matter what climate they’re in, to protect them from rain, cold, wind,  scorching heat, plagues of crickets, hail, tornadoes, what have you.

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