About us
Scratchy Things takes you to the next level with modern pet furnishings and accessories that complement your home and appeal to your pet's refined sense of style. We specialize in the design and creation of new forms of pet accessories. All items are handmade, made to order and customizable. As it's just the two of us, the work never stops, but that's why our work is based around something we love-cats and bunnies.
" "
We wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for our first cat, Freddie. She was the ultimate, most special creature. There aren't enough words in the universe to describe how special she was.
We have a lot of cats of our own and a huge amount of foster cats has passed through our home, but not a single one could compare to her. She was the smartest and most loyal cat.
She was also a real bastard sometimes and we adored her for it. She walked funny, had plenty to say, had a distinctive taste for some strange human foods and would be the center of attention during parties.
She was the best person we ever knew. Our person. She is truly the reason for everything.
The past 4 years, since we started our business, have been a total rollercoaster of emotions and impossible situations. There have been awful periods of loss and grief. We lost two of our own cats and two bunnies and we wouldn't even dare to count the ones we lost after saving them from the streets. Those losses and failures hit us the hardest but are also a good part of what kept us going as we try to make their lives better.
We find great comfort in improving the lives of cats and making them and their butlers happy. Areta is more the visual type and the one with cats' perspective in mind while Damir is more on the numbers and engineering side. Our contrasting personalities are a good part of the reason why we work great as a team and preventing us from occasionally inflicting blunt force trauma on each other.
When one of our animals is sick, she's the one staring blankly into the void and fighting to save lives. During the years has accumulated vast experience in taking care of animals in all stages with all difficulties.
Her grandest accomplishment is the ability to slip a pill to every cat, which may seem like a simple task to the less informed, but have you tried giving meds to an unwilling cat?
Has far too many scars to count and usually has at least one visible scratch on her face at all times. She sleeps in awkward positions just to appease the cats who cling to her.
She will have a hard time remembering your name but will get attached to your pets, especially the ones that have some difficulties that she's aware of and has worked on figuring out a way how to help.
Cries when something happens to animals that she doesn't even know, but has been following on social media.
Is an autumn/winter kind of person. It's all about pumpkins of all kinds, spices, leaves falling, wintery teas, rain, snow, the feeling when the cold wind pinches your face.
Pluviophile to the core. Reads a lot, but is now focused more on research about anything cat-related and to her displeasure, has no time to read real books.
Loves gin. Gin, tea and coffee. She's the one with all the advice on animal care and who is pushing for a better life for all animals.
She does all the finishes on our products. Due to being somewhat extremely critical, some pieces are remade to go along the ideal vision.
Every single piece of wood has come through her hands multiple times. Every bridge bar has spent at least 15 minutes in her hands.
Every single piece of wood has gone into multiple rounds of shaping, drilling and sanding down until it's just about perfect.
Then it goes into a cycle of painting and sanding between coats. Sanding between coats is all done 100% by hand and every inch of the wood has been touched and carefully inspected from all sides to attest to the quality.
She is the one who sews all the cushions, hammocks and toys and packs most ot the orders. She is also the one who wraps around the scratching posts for hours on end.
All the social media and most of the photos taken in our workshop are by her. SEO master in the making.
Wants to learn how to properly weld, to make metal sculptures and furniture and wants to go to a vet technician school to learn how to best take care of animals in our care.
Damir controls the wood production, carefully creates all the furniture and goes (way too far) into technical aspects of production. He's the one behind the virtual representations of the products, the one making all the visuals happen. Turned his 3D graphics hobby into an almost full-time design and visualization job so he's got that going for him, which is nice.
He's a tech guy, an ex sysadmin turned rogue carpenter and the one doing the heavy lifting, numbers-crunching and doing all the paperwork for orders.
Prior to this had no carpentry interests and now he is the one doing all the wood cutting, all the prep work, the drilling and fittings and in the end the assembly.
He was more of a dog person but quickly changed his mind and now has an array of needy cats that like to sleep on or in his beard.
Overthinks absolutely everything and reads too much info about every thing that interests him and wants far too many gadgets and toys.
We somewhat successfully trained him to tolerate human contact in very limited doses which makes him an ideal person for our customer support.
He is positively thrilled to be handling most of the customer communication at the moment and dreams of the day he will be made obsolete and replaced by an AI.
As an avid gamer and an introvert, he wishes he was a cat, as he could eat, sleep and ignore almost everyone most of the day.
Can be rather pleasant to be around if you feed him, Pizza and junk food usually do the trick.
As with everything he gets far too deep into, his ability to turn simple food into a science project is beyond the comprehension of normal people.
Listens to probably far too many comedy standups and during crunch time he finds comfort in the soothing sounds of Doom Eternal soundtrack.
We're not carpenters by trade, but have made the effort to learn everything and we keep working on improving our skills. we're both jacks-of-all-trades. Over the years we have developed many new furniture models and made countless improvements on our regular ones and we aim on keeping improving. Absolutely everything is done by the two of us. The designs are a mix of both of our ideas.
" "
" "
What started innocently enough, as fostering a few cats, turned out into a full-blown petting zoo fueled by catnip and a constant need for attention. There is no real divide between our work and home life, as one thing intertwines with another and our days are a non-ending struggle between work and taking care of 20+/- cats and 2 bunnies. Our lives now totally revolve around cats and what's unique about us is that we really do have a dedicated expert testing team on hand at all times, ranging from kittens to seasoned crash test dummies. The number and diversity of cats we take in requires a lot of care and knowledge and it taught us a lot about caring for the cats and adjusting to their individual needs.
We have a lot of cats of our own and a huge amount of foster cats has passed through our home, but not a single one could compare to her. She was the smartest and most loyal cat.
She was also a real bastard sometimes and we adored her for it. She walked funny, had plenty to say, had a distinctive taste for some strange human foods and would be the center of attention during parties.
She was the best person we ever knew. Our person. She is truly the reason for everything.
The past 4 years, since we started our business, have been a total rollercoaster of emotions and impossible situations. There have been awful periods of loss and grief. We lost two of our own cats and two bunnies and we wouldn't even dare to count the ones we lost after saving them from the streets. Those losses and failures hit us the hardest but are also a good part of what kept us going as we try to make their lives better.
We find great comfort in improving the lives of cats and making them and their butlers happy. Areta is more the visual type and the one with cats' perspective in mind while Damir is more on the numbers and engineering side. Our contrasting personalities are a good part of the reason why we work great as a team and preventing us from occasionally inflicting blunt force trauma on each other.
Areta is the sheer willpower and the driving force behind the project. Drinks way too much coffee and forgets to drink water daily as she is fueled by pure rage and caffeine most of the time.
Can't be seen without earphones on, not just the ear protective ones. Can't work, nor think in silence.
She is an extrovert that isn't really a people person, rather an animal person. Is more people persony when happy in a field attending a music festival.
Is into architecture and design, loves Sci-fi (even on SyFy) and is a huge Trekkie. Most days reaches the daily milestone of doing 20 000 steps just in the workshop, and the workshop isn't large.When one of our animals is sick, she's the one staring blankly into the void and fighting to save lives. During the years has accumulated vast experience in taking care of animals in all stages with all difficulties.
Her grandest accomplishment is the ability to slip a pill to every cat, which may seem like a simple task to the less informed, but have you tried giving meds to an unwilling cat?
Has far too many scars to count and usually has at least one visible scratch on her face at all times. She sleeps in awkward positions just to appease the cats who cling to her.
She will have a hard time remembering your name but will get attached to your pets, especially the ones that have some difficulties that she's aware of and has worked on figuring out a way how to help.
Cries when something happens to animals that she doesn't even know, but has been following on social media.
Is an autumn/winter kind of person. It's all about pumpkins of all kinds, spices, leaves falling, wintery teas, rain, snow, the feeling when the cold wind pinches your face.
Pluviophile to the core. Reads a lot, but is now focused more on research about anything cat-related and to her displeasure, has no time to read real books.
Loves gin. Gin, tea and coffee. She's the one with all the advice on animal care and who is pushing for a better life for all animals.
She does all the finishes on our products. Due to being somewhat extremely critical, some pieces are remade to go along the ideal vision.
Every single piece of wood has come through her hands multiple times. Every bridge bar has spent at least 15 minutes in her hands.
Every single piece of wood has gone into multiple rounds of shaping, drilling and sanding down until it's just about perfect.
Then it goes into a cycle of painting and sanding between coats. Sanding between coats is all done 100% by hand and every inch of the wood has been touched and carefully inspected from all sides to attest to the quality.
She is the one who sews all the cushions, hammocks and toys and packs most ot the orders. She is also the one who wraps around the scratching posts for hours on end.
All the social media and most of the photos taken in our workshop are by her. SEO master in the making.
Wants to learn how to properly weld, to make metal sculptures and furniture and wants to go to a vet technician school to learn how to best take care of animals in our care.
He's a tech guy, an ex sysadmin turned rogue carpenter and the one doing the heavy lifting, numbers-crunching and doing all the paperwork for orders.
Prior to this had no carpentry interests and now he is the one doing all the wood cutting, all the prep work, the drilling and fittings and in the end the assembly.
He was more of a dog person but quickly changed his mind and now has an array of needy cats that like to sleep on or in his beard.
Overthinks absolutely everything and reads too much info about every thing that interests him and wants far too many gadgets and toys.
We somewhat successfully trained him to tolerate human contact in very limited doses which makes him an ideal person for our customer support.
He is positively thrilled to be handling most of the customer communication at the moment and dreams of the day he will be made obsolete and replaced by an AI.
As an avid gamer and an introvert, he wishes he was a cat, as he could eat, sleep and ignore almost everyone most of the day.
Can be rather pleasant to be around if you feed him, Pizza and junk food usually do the trick.
As with everything he gets far too deep into, his ability to turn simple food into a science project is beyond the comprehension of normal people.
Listens to probably far too many comedy standups and during crunch time he finds comfort in the soothing sounds of Doom Eternal soundtrack.
We're not carpenters by trade, but have made the effort to learn everything and we keep working on improving our skills. we're both jacks-of-all-trades. Over the years we have developed many new furniture models and made countless improvements on our regular ones and we aim on keeping improving. Absolutely everything is done by the two of us. The designs are a mix of both of our ideas.
" "
Please know we take great pride in creating the products for you, and love hearing from customers and working on special requests. Feel free to contact us with any questions and requests, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you!
>^..^<