Introduction To Our Company
Our First Cat
Catastrophic Creations started way back in 2013 after we brought our first cat, Ickle, home. As we were outfitting our home for him, we started noticing that a lot of the furniture out there looked very similar and a bit outdated. So we started playing around with some unconventional ideas and making them ourselves. At that time,we were building the furniture from our third story apartment, waiting to run our miter saw and sander after our downstairs neighbor went to work.
More Crazy Ideas
After that, we continued to come up with crazy furniture ideas and shared them online.
First Product
The first piece we built was an Indiana Jones-style Cat Bridge and after we posted photos of it online, they went viral. Still today, if you Google “cat bridge” our furniture is the first result.
Location 2 - The Fire Hazard
Our second woodshop/staining booth was a one-car garage, nicknamed “the fire hazard.” It was covered in sawdust and heated with an electric space heater. After a couple of months, we realized this wasn’t sustainable (or safe) and moved into a two-car garage.
Location 3 - Two car garage
In 2014, we moved into a townhouse with a two car garage. We had doubled the size of our workshop and business was picking up. We were making frequent trips to Home Depot to load up on lumber. We liked Home Depot because they would cut the wood for free and this was important because we were transporting it in a 2-door Honda Civic.
Megan posing in front of what was our largest score of lumber to date. (Home Depot was having a sale)
Location 4 - First Commercial Space
In 2015, we moved into our first 1,600sq ft commercial space. I remember moving in and feeling like we would never need all that space, but we moved into another location twice the size within a year. The big issue with this space was that our wood shop, assembly and packaging area were all in the same warehouse, so before wrapping up the finished products we would have to take a brush and try to get as much sawdust as you could off first.
2016
In 2016, my childhood best friend Gabe Blauer joined us as the third owner of the business. He’s been with us since before we moved into a commercial space and has been instrumental in the operational side of the business.
5th Location - 4,000 sq ft
We really liked this space because it was two warehouses next to each other, so we could keep the sawdust off of our finished products. We were here for a few years, but ended up running out of space. By the time we moved out, we had 20 employees and 8 designated parking spaces, so the parking lot was like Tetris, but with cars.
Cats
Cats have sort of taken over our lives. We have four of them at home and their day time job is to test the furniture concepts to help make sure they’re functional and appealing. We typically leave prototypes on our walls for around two weeks. If they aren’t using it or having trouble with certain aspects, we change those or ditch the idea altogether. In 2018, a survey came out that an estimated 60% of cats in the US were overweight, so it’s very important to be sure you are providing enrichment and outlets for daily exercise. We feel incredibly lucky to have landed in a career where we’re able to help provide a solution.
Bronson's Weight loss Journey
Our newest member of the family is a 33-pound tabby named Bronson we adopted in April 2018. He seemed like the perfect addition to our home because it was obvious he wasn’t getting exercise, was under-stimulated and in need of some big life changes.
We’ve had him on an Instagram weight loss journey and today he’s lost over a third of his body weight and is much more active and happy then when we first brought him home.
Starting a social media account for him has been a really nice experience. It’s not only helped hold us accountable for his weight loss, but it’s also brought together a whole community of wonderful people interested in feline health and weight loss. His fans have given us a lot of great ideas to help Bronson lose weight and have been cheering him on along the way. If you would like to follow his weight loss journey, it’s @iambronsoncat on Instagram.
After 10 years, Megan and Mike ended up separating in 2020. They remain close friends and are still working key positions in the company.