PAS receives 'purr'-fect gift

SANDPOINT —  Many happy afternoons are ahead for Panhandle Animal Shelter cats courtesy of some industrious local students.

Sandpoint High School students Nathan Stangel, Elizabeth Eddy and Brady Lux, all members of Yogi Vasquez’s welding class, saw the fruition of weeks of hard work after delivering a bench and cat tree to Panhandle Animal Shelter’s cat house on Friday. The new assets will help the shelter’s many cats get plenty of exercise as they climb its multiple layers.

“It’s a good cause for the shelter and good experience for us, so it pretty much worked out perfectly,” Brady said.

The shelter originally requested that Vasquez’s class construct some sort of wooden structure for cats to rest on and climb. As it turned out, a wooden project was not possible, but a metal structure could easily be accomplished.

The students then set about designing the project. They knew they wanted it to have multiple layers and be large enough to entertain several cats at once. The trick was putting all those factors together in a package that made structural sense and could be completed on time. After careful consideration, they blueprinted a metal framework with several different platforms of varying shapes and sizes. They also added cat toys to each layer that hung from rope.

At that point, the only thing left to do was build the project. Vasquez’s class donated the metal for the project, while Sandpoint Furniture offered up carpet to make the structure comfortable for lounging cats. The classmates set to work welding the framework together, piece by piece.

“It was definitely a big learning experience for us,” Brady said. “We’d never really done anything like this before.”

The students also made a carpet-covered bench for the animal shelter. The addition was useful on many different levels, serving as an additional surface for the felines, a comfortable spot to sit for visitors in the cat room, and a convenient place to hide the cats’ litter boxes away from the sight of those looking in through the front window.

The result is a room much more thoroughly equipped to handle the volume of cats Panhandle Animal Shelter deals with in a given month. Even better, shelter officials can expect another gift from the class next year.

“We’ve been waiting for someone to do this project, so we’re thrilled that Yogi and his class were able to come out and help us with this,” Panhandle Animal Shelter director Mandy Evans said.