Our Story
It all started with a black cat on a dark night
Sadie, our cat, got out one night through a gap in the fence. We spent twenty minutes searching the neighbours' yard in the dark. She's a black tuxedo, so it wasn't until the torch beam landed on her that we had any idea where she was. At night, in someone else's backyard, she was almost impossible to spot.
She was sitting under a lemon tree, perfectly fine, looking at us as if to ask what the fuss was about.
That was the night we realised we needed something better than what we could find on the market. Not because Sadie was reckless, she's quite smart, and she loves being outside, but because our yard wasn't setup to contain a determined cat, and we weren't going to keep her indoors for the rest of her life.
We've lived in Melbourne, with cats, for 40+ years
We're a couple in the south-eastern suburbs. Alyce worked in dentistry for 15 years until our first-born came along. Shaun works in branding. (He sees everything as a system that could be a bit better.) We've lived in the house we're in now for a decade with our two cats, though only one of those is still with us.
We didn't set out to build a business. We wanted to keep one of those cats safe in our yard. The fact that we ended up here is [mostly] Sadie's fault.
Our two cats (and our logo)
The two cats in the Just For Cats logo are Cedric and Sadie. Cedric was a cream ragdoll, fond of sun patches and food. He passed away at age thirteen several years ago. We still miss him.
Sadie is the black tuxedo. She's still with us. She's older now and a little more relaxed, but she still occasionally tries her hand at climbing the fence. She was the first cat to test the netting, (Cedric was happy to stay on the ground) and the cat who confirmed it worked.
Every kit we ship is, in some sense, a kit she approved.
We tried everything
We tried a few solutions to contain Sadie. A plastic trestle gave her too much stiffness to vault off, some conventional netting from hardware stores wasn't durable enough, and other online retailers were too expensive for what we needed.
We looked at the premium options on the market, proper containment systems, cat enclosures, catios, and they were genuinely good, but would have cost thousands.
We didn't want an expensive solution, we wanted something that would hold up against the weather and a determined cat, but that was still great quality and that wasn't going to make our yard look ugly.
So we started researching manufacturers. We tested samples. We built mini-installs in our backyard until we had something that Sadie couldn't escape.
Something designed just for cats.
The 'bracket' problem
Once we had the right netting, it became obvious we needed something to give an "overhang" to stop Sadie vaulting over the fence. We spent a many weekends visiting every hardware shop in the south-east, buying brackets, taking them home, trying them on the fence, and returning them.
The closest match was an angled garden bracket that was too heavy. Another option was too short. Another too expensive.
So we designed our own. We knew the profile we needed: the angle, the length, the depth of the curve and we found a small manufacturer who could produce them properly. Steel, powder-coated, designed specifically for the curved overhang we needed. Strong and weatherproof.
The J-brackets that come with our Standard and Complete kits are the same ones we use on our own fence. We didn't borrow the design from anywhere.
It's completely our own.
Why we run it ourselves
Just For Cats is a small business. Two people, a small warehouse in Melbourne, a manufacturer we trust, and a courier we use every week.
We don't have a full-time customer service team because we don't need one (yet!)
When you email hello@justforcats.shop, the email comes to one of us, usually within an hour.
That's how we want it. We built this kit because we were the customers no one was making the right product for. We'd rather stay close to the people we sell to.
If you've got a question about whether this kit will work for your situation, write to us, we'll do our best to help.