cat house

10-12-2021Project

This weekend I finished my cat house miniature kit! Well, not really. I skipped a few steps because they weren't fun and didn't look very good. Actually, a lot of the instructions past the first page in the book were nonsensical or in an inconvenient order (so you'd have to use two tweezers to maneuver small parts in place instead of making them first). There were too many cut and fold paper parts for my liking. The designers of this kit vastly overestimated the dexterity and precision capable of normal humans. No sorry I am not a surgeon, I can not cut to the tenth of a millimeter. The second floor had a paper wood pattern to glue on, but I had cheap craft wood laying around, so I painted it and put an actual wood floor. I think the kit could have been vastly improved by providing cardstock instead of thin textweight paper. I may even go back and copy the curtain things onto cardstock so I can add them. Also, the stylistic consistency. It came with a realistic plastic fish, but the cats are all flat wooden pieces that you glue paper on. Why. The glue was also a pain, it was some kind of weird super glue. I switched to Tacky Glue about halfway through.

But despite all of that, I genuinely enjoyed putting it together! A lot! It's not as colorful as the example pictures (which were cleverly shot to hide all of the "problem" areas), but I think my version is better. It looks cute with other cat miniatures. I can't really say I'd recommend this one in particular to anyone not looking to make their own improvements, but I'm willing to give the maker's other sets a try. Anything with less flimsy paper. Gonna see what I can do with the extra materials!