Cat phone holder – Version 2

I have already made quite a few different phone holders as gifts for family and friends, such as some different animal-themed designs including a cat, an elephant and a dog, and recently made a small phone holder keyring design which looks a bit like a whale! We have found the “whale” to be particularly useful, and it moves around the house a lot whenever my wife and I are video chatting with friends and family or while she is watching videos while cooking or I am washing up in the kitchen. My wife loves cooking and will often play videos on her phone while she’s preparing food, so there was a clear need for a nice sturdy phone holder to live permanently in the kitchen!

My wife really loves cats and we have two delightful grey fluff monsters, which have been a part of our family for several years since they were small kittens. They can be very demanding when they think it must be time for food again – which is most of the time! I’m sure I will be writing about them every so often as they interact with my projects!

So I decided on making another cat-themed phone holder, but worked on a different design than the one I made for my Mum previously; this one has the cat facing sideways to the phone rather than away from. I found an image of the pose I wanted and I especially like the way the head tilts in towards the tail, which should hold the phone up nicely. I printed out the image and then glued it to some scrap mdf to act as a template.

I have used mdf templates quite a bit with the various small projects I’ve made so far, as I want to be able to make them again easily if needed, without needing to reprint the image or spend ages planning out the design again. I have started thinking about looking into making a few simple fun things to sell online, maybe towards the end of this year once everything settles down again hopefully into some kind of normal life! So having pre-made templates of various projects will mean I can make multiple near-identical versions of a particular design, and then have variations in the natural grain design of the wood I select. It would be interesting to make the same design in a range of different wood species, to see how each one looks.

Once I completed the mdf template, I selected a piece of pine left from a previous project and transferred the shape onto it. I cut off the small section I needed using a hand saw and then went around the shape following the lines closely with my coping saw. Sometimes I like to do things by hand when I’m not in a rush, as I can take my time and enjoy simply working with the wood. It would undoubtedly have been faster to cut the section off with my mitre saw and then shape the design into the workpiece using my jigsaw, but doing it manually I find very calming.

Once I had the rough shape cut out, I went around the shape with various shaped files and sandpaper to dial in to the pencil lines. I was particularly pleased with the curled up tail and spent quite a while sanding to make everything nice and smooth so the cat is comfortable to pick up and move about. I like that the ears are differently shaped as it makes the cat seem more lifelike – ours regularly sit with very special looks on their faces, or with a tiny bit of tongue poking out!

To finish the workpiece I decided against using a stain, predominantly because I didn’t have any left at the time, but also because I didn’t want the smell of any oil or varnish to be released if the holder gets damp in the humidity from cooking in the kitchen. So I left the finished holder as bare wood and gave it to my wife as a fun weekend present. She really likes it and the cat (phone holder) now lives on top of the microwave. Our (actual) cats tend to sit happily on top of the fridge and stare down at us while we’re in the kitchen, waiting on any spare chicken to appear!

So with the finished phone holder now living on top of the microwave, it puts a phone at the exact right height to comfortably watch videos while standing at the counter to prepare food. Another success! 🔨