I Finally Built a Computer Cage to Keep the Cat Out

The kitten no longer bites my computer cables [much] but he still wants to crawl around in them. More recently he started climbing up the back of the machines to lie on top, which is where the intake fans are for the CPU cooler so that has to stop. In his climbing on the connectors he also did something to one of the machines that screwed it up so bad that I had to temporarily unplug all the cables to get it to boot at all.

So… I sketched up some ideas and finally got a chance to hit the hardware store this week for supplies. I finished the first cage a few hours ago – somewhere around 35 feet of PVC, 40 connectors, 100+ zip ties, and some bird netting:

I left the front bays accessible and included a flip-up panel for access to some ports and power buttons on the top of the machine.

The back section fits over a cable tray already built into the desk, and the front section slips on and off if I need to get to the rest of the computer. When both pieces are in place, strong magnets keep them aligned and connected.

It’s just press-fitted without any glue, and the netting mostly keeps things taut.

It took two days and probably 6 hours of experimentation to get everything sized correctly. Now that I have the measurements I should be able to build another one for the other computer a lot faster, though it’s going to require another store trip to stock up first. There’s also still some cabling “outside” the cage that will probably have to be dealt with somehow, such a USB hub and charging cables for various devices.