Pyramid Cat Bed
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Review of the Pyramid Cat Bed by Whisker City Suggested Uses for the Pyramid Cat Bed Related Products to the Pyramid Cat Bed |
Review of the Pyramid Cat Bed by Whisker City
I bought one of these pyramid cat beds for one of my cats years ago, so many years ago that I can’t even remember how long ago it was, but the cat it belongs to will be seventeen in March, and she wasn’t even an elderly cat at that point, so its been quite a while, and we still use the cat bed. Cats love to sleep in small, hidden places that are enclosed, or seem enclosed, as anyone who’s ever found their cat inside their closet, dresser drawers, a small cardboard box or a paper grocery bag can tell you. I was at Petsmart one Christmas, saw this pet bed, and knew Samantha, who particularly loves to sleep in secret hidden places, would absolutely love it. I bought one, planned on taking it home and trying it out on all three cats to see how many of them liked it, and then returning to buy more as needed.
The other two cats never stood a chance. Samantha was sitting on the front porch when I came home, and I pulled the pyramid cat bed out of the car and put it down on the porch and said “heh sweetie look what mommy bought you” and she knew right away what it was, who it was for and immediately got into it, sat down and went to sleep. It didn’t even make it into the house before it was occupied. She didn’t come out of the pyramid bed for several hours, she loved it from the start, she slept inside it that night and for many nights thereafter and its been her bed ever since. The other cats are not allowed to get in it, much less sleep in it. She loved it so much I went back the next day to get another one for the other cats, but they must be popular Christmas gifts, because they were all sold out, and I had to buy a second bed we didn’t like as much.
This is an inexpensive cat bed, and yet its really held up over the years, we’ve definitely gotten more than our money’s worth and both the cat and I still really like the design. The “pyramid” is made of a soft warm fabric, it gets its shape from foam inserts, there is a faux fur pillow for the cat to sit on, a toy ball hanging from the top for the cat to play with if she or he is so inclined. My eight pound cat easily fits in it, our seventeen pound cat probably could if he was ever given the chance, but the opening on the current version looks a little smaller than mine, so bear that in mind. The whole bed is machine washable, but you can also remove the faux fur pillow bed and just wash that as needed. The bed has been occupied quite a bit, its been washed repeatedly, and the pillow even more, and the stitching has held, the pillow is intact and still puffy (although I do have to fluff it periodically because Samantha mushes it down through use), and the pyramid has largely held its shape, except the bottom front corners by the opening, where the cat tends to stretch out and stick her feet, so I’m not sure if its pooched out a bit on its own, or if the cat did it. (In either case, as a whole, it has held its shape really well, in spite of years of washing.)
If I were asked to identify to any cons to the bed, I would say it keeps the cat so warm and cozy, she doesn’t like it as much during the summer, not surprising given that she’s a longhair, but that’s due more to the weather than the bed, and I never put the bed up because Samantha still sleeps in it, mostly at night and colder days, even during the summer months. I would also say as the cat relaxes and stretches out, every once in a while she tips it over, so I would advise placing it back away from the edge of the table, the dresser or the bed – or put it on the floor, but then we’ve never bought any cat bed that our cats didn’t at one time or another tip over, and in order to prevent it from tipping over, it would probably have to be heavier, less comfortable, and more expensive. And to be fair to the bed, sometimes the cat relaxes and stretches out so much in it, that SHE falls out of it, while the pet bed stays in place, so it may be more about the cat than about the bed. The only other “con” is that the first time I washed it, the back panel of foam got twisted up a bit inside its segment, but I just loosened a couple of stitches in the bottom, stuck my fingers in, popped it back in place and then sewed it shut. You could easily avoid this problem, assuming it hasn’t already been fixed in the intervening years, by tacking down the back foam piece with a needle and thread. Its not a big issue.
One suggestion, however. Some cats like Samantha take to the pet beds immediately, others that are more skittish take a little while to get used to them (likely they smell of foreign places, and whatever person packed the cat bed into its box) and take to them. It took weeks and weeks for our oldest cat to take an interest in the second cat bed we bought, and even longer for her to start sleeping in it. Every cat is different. Its probably not the best gift for a big kitty that has well, a thick layer of fat to keep him warm, but most cats, especially those who like to sit in boxes, drawers, any little cubby hole they can find, should love it. To encourage reluctant cats, you might want to sprinkle a little catnip inside or put a few cat treats inside each day, just to get your cats to go inside, check it out, get used to it.
Suggested Uses for the Pyramid Cat Bed
- Especially Good for a Cat or Small Dog That is Elderly, is Missing Fur Because of Surgery, or Has Been Ill. Every time I reach in it to pet my cat, she’s always nice and warm in her pet bed. She’s always loved the bed, right from the start, but she particularly loved it last summer when her long fur got so knotted up the groomer at the vet’s had to give her a lion cut to get rid of it (I’ve found that cats tend to groom less and less as they grow old, she had been having some health issues, she dislikes being groomed, and the fur knots had gotten really bad). With almost all her long protective fur gone, she felt physically vulnerable and she also needed her pyramid bed to keep warm, even in the summer heat. Her pyramid cat bed was her little safety bolt hole, where she could retreat and avoid the other cat, feel safe and secure, and where she could keep warm in spite of having next to no fur. We’ve been blessed and had a lot of our cats make it into the upper teens and even to twenty, and the older and frailer they become, the more they seem to need and appreciate soft and warm bedding.
- Good Choice for a Cat or Small Dog With Short, Sparse Fur. Samantha, the “owner” of the pet bed is a longhair who finds the pyramid cat bed a perfect temperature at night (snuggling up with mommy is a little too warm for her, and she doesn’t like the fact that mommy tends to roll over in bed a lot and keeps waking her up). But short haired cats and dogs (like Chihuahuas and miniature pinschers, who always seem to be cold) would like it even more. Depending on your climate, the season, and how cold your home is at night, you can either let them sleep on the included pillow, or slip in either an electric pad or a microwaveable heating pad for even more warmth on cold winter nights.
- Probably Would Work Outdoors Under the Right Circumstances. Let me preface this by saying, the bed is clearly not designed for outdoor use, but I personally haven’t seen a cat bed intended for outdoor use, so sometimes you have to improvise. If you can find a location for the bed that is sheltered from snow, water and rain, if you can keep it from getting damp in other words, and keep it out of direct sunlight during the day to avoid fading, I think the bed would last long enough to justify your investment. It obviously won’t last as long as it would indoors (its intended use), but I would personally give it a shot if we let our cats out at night. For colder climates and seasons, you can get a microwaveable pet heating pad (see below) where you just microwave for a few minutes, and they are supposed to hold the heat for most of the night.
Related Products to the Pyramid Cat Bed
In case you don’t like the colors available for the cat bed (one down side of having a leopard print cat bed with a black interior is that if your cat has long cream fur like mine, every loose fur will show up on the bedding) or those colors clash with your furnishings, I’ve included some similarly constructed cat / pet beds below. I don’t think any of them are from the same manufacturer, Whisker City, but they all have customer reviews for each of them, so you should be able to get a good idea how other folks, and their cats, have liked these other cat beds. (I’ve listed the one that seems the closest in construction first, it has a removable pillow bed that can be washed.) I’ve also included links to a couple of the microwaveable pet heating pads that I mentioned above.
Babycakes Cake Pop Maker
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Babycakes Cake Pop Maker
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About the Babycakes Cake Pop Maker
Ideas How to Use Your Babycakes Cake Pop Maker
Cake Pop Cookbooks, Supplies and Accessories
Cake Pop Tutorial Videos
About the Babycakes Cake Pop Maker
The traditional method for making cake pops is to bake a cake, crumble it into a fine crumb, add a large amount of frosting to it, scoop and form each cake pop by hand, cool, insert the lollipop sticks, then dip in melted chocolate, let harden, then decorate. Personally, if I’m going to put that much time and effort into a dessert, and given the ratio of frosting to cake, consume that much sugar and so many calories, I’d rather made a ganache and make chocolate truffles instead. But there is a new alternative that is faster, easier and allows you and your family to spend your time decorating the cake pops instead: the Babycakes cake pop maker.
Now what it produces is not the traditional cake pop. The way it works is very simple: plug in the machine to warm up, mix up the batter (recipes are included, or you can experiment with your own, although the lighter and fluffier your cake batter, the less successful the cake pops will be), scoop about a tablespoon of batter into each small circle in the cooking surface, close the lid, wait a couple of minutes, check the cake pops for doneness, then unplug the machine and remove the pops with the included fork tool. Cool the cake pops, dips the lollipop sticks about a half inch into melted chocolate, insert into each cake pop, let harden in place, then decorate as you would a traditional cake pop. Like all other baking, you’ll probably have to do a little experimentation, especially if you’re using your own cake recipe or a cake mix instead of recipes designed for a cake pop maker, figure out what you like best to add the batter to the cake pop machine, exactly how much batter is just the right amount, how long to cook each kind of cake, but the basic process couldn’t be simpler, and the results couldn’t be much faster. Clean up is pretty basic and quick.
The cake pop maker comes with the machine, instruction manual, a fork tool to test the doneness of the pops and remove them, some lollipop sticks and a cake pop cooling and decorating stand that holds 12 pops. If you’d like to read the instructional manual for the cake pop maker before buying it, or so that you can make sure you have all your ingredients on hand before it arrives, its actually available as a PDF online: Babycakes Cake Pop Maker Instruction Manual
Ideas How to Use Your Babycakes Cake Pop Maker
- Satisfy Your Family’s Sweet Tooth Much Faster and For Less Money. Most people have a sweet tooth and want to indulge it periodically. Ice cream never lasts for long in our refrigerator, and good quality ice cream is expensive, same for commercial candy, trips to the store take time and waste gas, brownies take 45 minutes to bake, my favorite banana bread recipe takes an hour, and my favorite pound cake recipe requires advance preparation, takes a long time to prepare and an hour and a half to bake. Baking your own sweets are less expensive, you can keep all the ingredients on hand ready to make at a whim, your kids can participate, you get to control what goes into your sweets – and what doesn’t – and with cake pops, there’s automatic portion size. Cake pops take less than five minutes to cook, and what’s especially nice during hot summers, you won’t have to heat up your whole oven – and your kitchen – in the process.
- Bake With Your Kids or Grandkids. Making and decorating cake pops together with your kids or grandkids would be a fun, entertaining project for a weekend afternoon or a school holiday, or to make fun, inexpensive edible gifts for their friends and classmates for Valentine’s Day, Halloween or Christmas. And it costs you nothing more than the price of the ingredients and a little electricity. Cake pops can be dipped in colorful sprinkles, crushed candy or cookies, or if you want to make them fancier and more detailed, you can paint them using Edible Paint for Cakes
. Gift cake pops can be placed in Clear Lollipop Bags
, tied with some colorful gift ribbon, and they’ll be absolutely beautiful gifts to give to the kids’ teachers, friends and schoolmates.
- Throw a Cake Pop Birthday or Halloween Party. Rather than spending a lot more money on a bakery or store bought birthday / sheet cake, which may contain a lot of preservatives or even shortening in the icing (ick) which you don’t want kids to eat, make cake pops for the kids. You can make the cake pops in advance, or if you need another kids activity to make your birthday party special and different, you can dip all your cake pops in their candy coating in advance, allow them to harden, and then let the kids decorate the cake pops themselves with candy sprinkles, crushed cookie crumbs, edible paint, or icing in small Ziploc bags with holes at the edge for piping. For Halloween, you can make pumpkin cake pops, or you could make some of them look like candied apples, black cats, you could drape a thin sheet of white fondant over the top and make a ghost cake pop. There are tons of ways you could make spooky Halloween cake pops.
- Make Cake Pop Table Arrangements for Your Holiday Meals. Rather than spend additional money for table arrangements, use a few Lollipop / Treat Stands
as your centerpieces, and gear your cake pops to the holiday theme. For Easter, you could use chocolate cake and decorate your pops as Easter eggs, duckies or bunnies, for Thanksgiving you could make pumpkin spice cake pops and decorate them like acorns, fall apples, paint them with autumn leaves, and for Christmas, you could use chocolate mint cake, peppermint cake, or eggnog cake, and decorate the cake pops like Christmas Tree ornaments!
- Make a Cake Pop Croquembouche for Christmas. The traditional method for making a croquembouche (also croque en bouche) is to make cream puffs out of pate a choux batter, fill them with crème patisserie and assemble them into a Christmas tree shape using either using chocolate or caramel to secure the cream puffs in place. The result can be incredibly impressive and incredibly delicious, but it takes a lot of skill, a lot of time, and a lot of work.
You could make a smaller version with cake pops, perhaps using the Red Velvet Cake Pop Recipe included in the manual, perhaps using a pound cake recipe to emulate the rich butter and egg taste of cream puffs, or maybe even an adaptation of your favorite eggnog cake recipe. There are lots of different ways you could go in covering your cake pops, the traditional caramel or chocolate, or stir your melting chocolate with a candy cane to add a little peppermint flavor to your chocolate, or you could use Wilton Dark Green Candy Meltsto emulate green Christmas tree branches with White Candy Melts
to emulate snow on the branch tips. Take a floral foam cone and cover it with tin foil or some such food grade covering, then attach the cake pops, either using lollipop sticks or chocolate or caramel in the traditional fashion.
And your kids could make little snowmen with two cake pops, royal icing, and the candy decorations of your choice!
Cake Pop Cookbooks, Supplies and Accessories
I’ve included links to a number of cake pop books / cookbooks below, as well as some basic supplies. At a minimum, you’re probably going to want some lollipop sticks, melting chocolate (to hold the lollipop sticks securely in the cake pops) – or caramel should work if you don’t like chocolate – a couple of wire racks to cool the cake pops if you have them, and something to hold the cake pops while their coating dries. You could poke holes with a lollipop stick in any odd Styrofoam blocks you have, or if that isn’t available, you could use floral foam.
Bakerella Cake Pop Video Tutorial
This cake pop tutorial video was done by Angie Dudley, also known as Bakerella, the author of the first cake pop cookbook listed above. She uses the traditional cake pop method, with tons and tons of frosting mixed in with cake crumbs, but she does a really good demonstration of how to properly dip your cake pops into the melted candy coating (it would apply for chocolate or caramel as well) so that you don’t accidentally break them up, and how to gently remove the excess coating.
Babycakes Cake Pop Video Tutorial
This video tutorial was made by someone who purchased a Babycakes cake pop maker, not by a professional, so its a good guide to what the average user can expect to see in terms of results. And you can see exactly how it works. She also had the excellent idea of using a Pancake Pen
