Marketplace: “Scratch Your Claws Here” Doormat, or Cat Mat

Bernadette August 17, 2023 0 Comments cat artwork, cat doormats, cat gifts, cat mats, cat merchandise

Mariposa shows us how to use the cat mat.

Do you have your black cat silhouette doormat? How about your kitty? They serve both purposes: A durable mat for you to wipe your feet on before coming in the door, and for your kitty to scratch to her heart’s content—and if you have community cats you can do both at the same time! My friend and neighbor Peg has a mat for her community cats and they dutifully scratch it every day.

My highly inquisitive and capable feline testing team discovered their own uses for this human “doormat”—and they have their own indoors! As you see demonstrated above, Mariposa has a good scratch and poses purrfectly for the camera. I had them on display during my open house, and Mariposa tested and found them good as well as the Brothers Three.

They sniffed them, and the tried a few things with them.

Then Jelly Bean lifted up his paws and followed his feline nature while Giuseppe carefully observed.

Giuseppe declared it “good.”

So we are here to tell you that you can have two reasons to purchase one of our handprinted cat mats. Or you can get two, one for the humans, and one for the cats!

And I can tell you one thing they do extremely well, as I’ve evidenced using the scraps I cut from larger mats by the litterboxes: they are effective litter mats. The cats love to scratch them after they leave the box like nothing else I’ve ever used. One drawback is that they aren’t easy to clean because the coir fibers need to dry for at least a day after they are rinsed. I actually find it worth it in order to keep all the stray litter in one place.

They are $15.00 each in person or when you purchase and pick up here, or $25.00 each when shipped because they are so heavy. Click here to find them on www.PortraitsOfAnimals.net.

Scroll down to read about the inspiration and how I designed and developed them.

Developing this doormat or cat mat

This design began as a marker sketch of Bella having a stretch in the kitchen, along with two other activities that easily lent themselves to a set of sketches, called “Fun Things Bella Does With Her Tail”. I always liked those silhouettes, and knew someday I’d “do something” with them. This is the first “something”, but it won’t be the last.

Many years ago, just after I moved into this house, a friend gave me a coir doormat with two black kitty silhouettes on it. I still have it at my front door, and it’s still in pretty good shape. It’s provided a lot of that inspiration to make my own doormats too.

my old cat doormat — My old doormat, faded but still clear.

Lately, I’ve been following all the crafty posts about stenciling doormats, mostly these “coir”, or coconut shell fiber, mats, as well as other types of synthetic carpet and felted types. For the most part the makers use acrylic craft paint and advise they are not weatherproof and may not wear for very long. What kind of a doormat is that? Certainly not a mat like the one I’ve enjoyed all these years. And if I’m going to make something, and someone else is going to spend money on it, it’s going to be durable and last longer than a few months.

I purchased a few 24″ x 16″ premade coir doormats at IKEA to play around with. They are a good size, got good reviews, and seemed pretty sturdy after I used one for a bit and let it be rained on and rolled and folded it.

But the paint was the real question—which of the many paints available was going to stand up to both weather and wear? Back in the 1980s I was a sign painter and used a product called 1-Shot lettering enamel, and some of the signs I painted then, like my house sign, are still in good shape now. I purchased a new can of black, cut the stencil out of adhesive vinyl, and stenciled one up. The paint was very sticky for this application, and though that works well for lettering it picked up my stencil and I had to be very careful of losing the edges in tiny areas, especially if I had text, which I had originally planned, and I had to use more paint than I expected. The paint is expensive, a little too expensive to use for this in order for me to be able to resell them for a reasonable cost. I put a little more thought into what was the next most weatherproof and durable paint and decided that would be porch and floor enamel, which is more fluid but easily applied, and very affordable for this project. Plus, it dries a lot faster, there are no toxic fumes, and cleans up with soap and water. That’s a win all around!

Designing the mat

black cat doormat — The original design for the doormat.

Next was to work up one of the ideas I had, and I went with my favorite. You’ll see above that I had a line of text under the kitty, “SCRATCH YOUR CLAWS HERE!” Most of the doormats I see anywhere have text on them, and sometimes they’re all text. I’m all for designing something that people apparently want and I had several ideas like this one. But because of the sticky issue I described above with the paint, there was no way I could stencil the text. So I shared the mat without it just to get some feedback. And that’s what really surprised me—everyone I asked said they preferred it without the text! Well, that made my job that much easier. Nearly all my designs had text on them. I may still have one or two that have text, but I like just the kitty silhouettes I’ve worked up over the years. Let me know what you think in the comments below or send me an email, and as I work with these I’ll figure that out.

Where to purchase the mats

Mats are $15.00 each in person, $25.00 with shipping. Because of the weight, 3.5 pounds each, I can’t offer any discounts for purchasing multiple mats. Click here to find them on www.PortraitsOfAnimals.net.

Marketplace

Maybe Mimi can have a new doormat to scratch on too!

Take a look at other new merchandise and featured artwork.

Marketplace is a feature on The Creative Cat to share the latest coming out of my studio with my readers. Once a week on Thursday I feature something new in my “shop”.

Read about creating custom items

Find out more about creating custom items for your own home using the images you see here. Visit the “Ordering Custom Art” page to see samples and read bout how to order.

Find out about events and festivals where you can find me and my work.

Sign up for my e-newsletter (below), check the widget on the sidebar on my home page, or sign up to receive posts on Portraits of Animals Marketplace. I plan on plenty of events this coming summer in the Pittsburgh area.

It’s all done under the close and careful supervision of my studio cats!

Copyright

All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission, although links to your site are more than welcome and are shared. Please ask if you are interested in using and image or story in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of an image or a product including it, check my animal and nature website Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.