Front:

Top:

Rear:

The way I intended to finish this changed several times during the making. I was going to cover the tubes with material or contact, then I decided painting them would be easier, then I decided recycled denim attached with a hot glue gun for the big tubes and jute rope on the smaller ones would be easier on my hands. Paul did the painting for the base and the ends of the tubes.

I should have stuck with the first idea. Glueing on big pieces of material would have been faster. I was going to do this with the cloth from some old pairs of jeans, but I realised I didn’t have enough to cover all three big tubes. I did have, on the other hand, lots of pre-cut strips of denim left over from weaving rag rugs. Still, that meant I used black denim on the whole thing, which looks really good.

The last step was to make a removable and washable lining for one of the big tubes from some leftover fake fur, batting, black cotton and velcro. That only took fifteen minutes or so.

Slinky was already playing with the tower in it’s naked cardboard form after I did a test build, and the fancying up hasn’t put him off. He’s not noticed that the tubes are now scratching posts yet, and I haven’t drawn his attention to the fur-lined nest yet. But us humans are rather chuffed with how it turned out.