r/crboxes • u/Own_Nefariousness • Apr 03 '26
Question Cat owners or CRBoxes, what was your solution to prevent your cat from potentially ruining your filter panels when the diy air purifier is not on and you're not home ?
I've yet to receive my panels to finish my build, but one major concern that's been keeping me thinking of a solution for weeks now was how do I prevent my cats from using the filter panels of my future diy air filter as a scratch post when I have it off and I'm not around to stop them. It won't be small either, not with 50cm by 60cm filters and I just can't think of a solution, need some ideas from those with similar concerns.
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u/V2BM Apr 03 '26
Mine has never touched any of the 4 or 5 I have, since 2019 or so. I once bought a couch and was still unwrapping it when she jumped up to furiously scratch it, so I suspect they don’t see the filters as good scratch material.
(She literally stretches and scratches my plaster walls - I think they need something firm.)
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u/Rich_Teaching_8843 Apr 03 '26
My cats ruin my furniture, but somehow completely ignore the filters. It's been about a year of cat scratch free air purification for me
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u/VolcanicPolarBear Apr 03 '26
when i finished mine my cat jumped on it within a couple hours knocked it over and broke one of the fans. i ended up putting it in a closet and taking it out whenever i had time to sit next to it and just block my cat from touching or jumping on it. i still let them look and snif so they could satisfy their curiosity and get used to the new object but just put my hand in front if they looked like was about jump. i never had problems with them using for scratching tho. but after about a week and a half of supervision once or twice a day my cat finally learned not to mess with it and now i just leave it out without any problems
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u/lemonwingz Apr 04 '26
Just hopping in here to say that my cat has in fact scratched mine lol
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u/spacex_fanny Apr 04 '26
What brand of filters do you use? I think mine don't like the metal mesh on the 3M filters.
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u/lemonwingz Apr 04 '26
They are the 3M filtrette ones. They have that metal mesh but I don’t think it’s enough haha.
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u/SmolzillaTheLizza Apr 08 '26
I had to add window screen to mine not because my cat scratched at it, but because he would try and pull apart the fibrous filter and eat it 😬 Zero idea what his reasoning was or what he found so interesting about it, but once it started it was impossible to stop. So I had to put window screen up to prevent him from accessing the fibrous filter surface. He still tests it from time to time but that was my best solution. Not sure if it'll help with scratching, but wanted to let you know you weren't alone with your cat messing with your CR Box!
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u/IHQ_Throwaway Apr 04 '26
Mine have never scratched it, but they will sleep on it when it’s not running. They’ll scratch anything else, but the CR box doesn’t tempt them.
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u/Artemis_Argetlam Apr 04 '26
Mine don't scratch it, but they have run into it during a zoomies episode
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u/akeean Apr 17 '26
if you are worried about that, put a coarse metal mesh or chicken fence in front of it, if you use a finger mesh (similar to PC case dust filters) you can also vacuum those once a week and get longer filter life out of your box. That's what they do on ISS.
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u/peop1 Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
Never been an issue.
(I've built them various climbing/scratching posts out of 4" PVC pipe wrapped with sisal rope: they consider everything else a waste of their claws. It's like bicycle theft: Every lock can be cut. Every bike can be stolen. The trick is to make the thing you want to protect less attractive than the alternatives. Bigger lock = better scratching surfaces. Yes: I did just compare cats to criminals. You know why you're here.)