Guy builds staircase elevator to help his elderly cat enjoy outdoor sunbathing

YouTuber Liam Thompson has a nearly 20-year-old cat named Frodo who’s long enjoyed a daily routine of walking down a set of stairs to lie in his backyard’s best sun patch. The only issue is that Frodo’s mobility isn’t what it used to be, and he struggles to get up and down stairs. Rather than force his elderly cat to suffer the indignity of requiring a human’s direct assistance to get to his sunbathing spot, Thompson went ahead and built the little dude an elevator instead.

Thompson introduces the video demonstrating his creation by showing us how “despite [Frodo’s] ancientness, he still insists on hobbling down [the] stairs every day to sit out in the sun.” Understandably eager to help his pet more comfortably accomplish this simple goal, he gets to work building a track and cart that can make this process a bit easier.

The two parts of his catevator assembled and powered by an electric hoist, Thompson tests out his prototype by putting a stuffed animal on the cart, pressing the power button on a remote, and watching as it smoothly descends the stairs. That done, he refines the test version to enhance its safety features, paints it a pleasing sky blue, and lets Frodo The Cat give it a try.

It works. The cat lies down on the cart, sleepily looks around himself as the device gets to work carrying him downward, then happily departs his new elevator to, as usual, scope out a good sun patch and relax in it. When Frodo’s finished catching a few rays, he returns to the cart, rides it back up the stairs, and calmly departs.

Thompson has not only done a good deed for his feline pal but may have discovered a pair of extremely lucrative business opportunities: cat elevator manufacturing and, no less valuable, a video series consisting of nothing more than clips of Frodo riding his new invention up and down.

[via Digg]

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