The wait is over! The long awaited sequel to Jackson Galaxy and Kate Benjamin’s New York Times Bestseller Catification: Designing a Happy and Stylish Home for Your Cat (and You) was released today. Catify to Satisfy: Simple Solutions for Creating a Cat-Friendly Home combines Jackson’s wealth of experience working with challenging cats, Kate’s expertise with cat-friendly design and DIY projects, and ideas from members of Catification Nation to provide more than twenty projects and a huge number of simple design tricks to help cat guardians provide a truly enriched environment for their feline family members.
Jackson delves deeply into key issues of catification. Topics covered include setting up a base camp for your cat and why scratching is so vital to a cat’s mental and physical well-being. He explains why cat superhighways are such an important component of allowing cats to navigate their territory, especially in multicat homes. Jackson, as we know by now, is all about the cat’s point of view, and he pulls no punches when it comes to telling it to us straight. I particularly liked the section on litter box issues, where Jackson speaks out against automatic self-cleaning litter boxes and covered boxes. And while the book does offer some creative solutions for hiding litter boxes, they always put the cats’ needs ahead of human sensibilities.
Kate provides plenty of design tips that range from the simple (placing a yoga mat on the top of a cabinet to turn it into an instant vertical lounging space) to the more complex (building your cat tunnel cocoon.) Kate makes even the simplest design hacks look appealing so they integrate beautifully into your living space.
Each section features a “Faces in the Nation” showcase of a catification project. From an artist who merged her love for cats with her passion for art and created a dazzling kitty wonderland to a custom builder who used his talent to construct a paradise for his cats, these projects are so stunning, they will take your breath away. I found myself tearing up frequently while reading this particular section – not something I expected from this book – because it sure takes a lot of love and dedication to conceive and realize the environment these individuals created for their cats. And while your home may never look like the spectacular space Greg Krueger created for his fur kids in his Minnesota home, you will get plenty of ideas from these sections.
And that, ultimately, is what Catify to Satisfy is all about: it will make even the most experienced cat guardians view their own living space with fresh eyes. I already have quite a few ideas for making small changes around my house, and for tackling some bigger projects down the road.
This is a book that belongs on every cat guardian’s bookshelf. It’s a book that will change lives, both for cats and their humans, by allowing both species to thrive in an environment that is cat-friendly and satisfies the human need to be surrounded by beauty. It will also save lives by preventing and eliminating behavior issues and keeping cats in their catified homes. And, as Jackson states in the book’s introduction if all the citizens of Catification Nation spread the knowledge and empowerment they have gained from this book, “the winners will not just be the cats in your home, but all cats.”
Catify to Satisfy is available from Amazon, and everywhere books are sold.
