I recently made a carpeted wall for my cats to climb. I’ve now added an old projector to the mix, and it’s become a cat theater.

The wall is made from a 4’x8’ sheet of plywood, covered in carpet. The carpet is really cheap, but that gives it a rough texture that the cats can easily climb. The carpet is attached to the plywood with carpet adhesive and stapled around the edges of the plywood.

I was given an old projector recently, and I thought the cats might enjoy chasing the moving images. The projector is low res, but it’s pretty bright. It’s old enough that I had to buy a VGA adapter.

The projector is mounted to the wall and is connected to a Raspberry Pi running LibreELEC (a Kodi distribution). I’ve transferred a bunch of videos to the RPi using the web interface, and Kodi has an app that I can use as a remote control.

The cats also love to chase a laser pointer around the wall, so I made a virtual laser pointer with the projector. I have a python script that makes a video of a red dot moving around the screen in a whole bunch of different ways.

The cats like the videos, but it’s the carpet wall that’s the real hit. It’s really entertaining to watch them play on it. It’s a great, easy DIY project that I’d recommend to anyone with cats, as long as you don’t mind looking like a crazy cat person :D