Scrappy Crocheted Chunky Cat Bed

I wanted to make a cat cave for my cat. He loves boxes. Paper bags he’s sort of meh about. Sometimes he wants to explore a paper bag but then again he will often ignore them. But boxes are his passion. Some would call boxes his obsession.

So, the cat cave. They look very intriguing if you adopt a cat perspective. You know, when you look at it you are convinced that the cat will spend many glorious hours luxuriating in cat cave heaven. I just could not figure out how to crochet one and have the sides stay upright, to hold the ceiling off the floor.

There were the wool felted ones that looked quite insanely elaborate, expensive, and time consuming and even messy. Anyone who owns a cat knows—if you spent 40 hours making something for your cat you will be lucky if he enjoys it for an hour.

Yeah. So I wanted something quick and to the point. I decided to use up leftover yarn. Again, tough to bring myself to go out and spend a bunch of dough on something I have no idea if he’ll like and use or not. I bought him a cat bed for Christmas one year and he used it for two weeks then never again. The following year I gave it away.

It’s a simple, straightforward pattern. Using chunky yarn and a large crochet hook (J) I chained 4, slip stitch to join and worked 12 sc in loop. It’s a constantly progressive increase to keep it flat. So, second round, 2 sc in each sc, third round 2 sc in every other st, fourth round, 2 sc in every third stitch, then 2 sc in every fourth stitch, and so on until you have the diameter that you want.

My cat is a large boy. Everyone asks if he’s Maine Coon. He really looks like he could be but his mom was a petite Siamese stray. A blue point Siamese. Dad could have been Maine Coon, I guess. He’s 14 pounds of cat under all that hair.

So, when you get your desired diameter (I worked to 18”) do a few rows of straight sc without increases. This creates the sides. I did about 3”. That’s about five rows. You’re pretty much making a crocheted basket with short sides.

I finished it with the crab stitch (aka reverse sc st) and he loves his crocheted chunky cat bed. I made it in February this year and he might go a week or two without using it but he always goes back to it. He just loves it.

The cat hair means it's a well loved and used cat bed. Yeah, whenever I ran out of one yarn I just started the next, using up as much as I could. The cat does not mind at all.

Since I used leftovers I don’t know how much yarn it took. If you want to make it and need to buy the yarn I would say to expect it to take at least 6-7 skeins of the 4 oz/113g 64 yd/59m chunky style. It will vary with how big you want the bed to be and how high the sides. There’s not a lot of yarn on those skeins. Better yet, go ahead and use up the odds and ends from other projects.