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Crafting with Cat Hair: Cute Handicrafts to Make with Your Cat

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Got fur balls?

Are your favorite sweaters covered with cat hair? Do you love to make quirky and one-of-a-kind crafting projects? If so, then it’s time to throw away your lint roller and curl up with your kitty! Crafting with Cat Hair shows readers how to transform stray clumps of fur into soft and adorable handicrafts. From kitty tote bags and finger puppets to fluffy cat toys, picture frames, and more, these projects are cat-friendly, eco-friendly, and require no special equipment or training. You can make most of these projects in under an hour—with a little help, of course, from your feline friends!

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 16, 2009

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Kaori Tsutaya

4 books1 follower

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5 stars
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128 (25%)
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134 (26%)
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38 (7%)
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16 (3%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 91 reviews
Profile Image for karen.
4,012 reviews172k followers
November 29, 2017
i have been sick in bed with some kind of dickensian wasting disease for the past FIVE DAYS., so i am way behind on everything i need to do. but just before i contracted the virus that will probably end the world, i made this list, so i attach it to this old review, for enjoyment and holiday helpering:

http://www.rifflebooks.com/list/24865...

are you kidding me?

AAAAARRRRRE YOOOOOU KIDDDDING MEEEE???

this is the best book ever. and i know i say shit like that a lot, because i am excitable as all hell, but seriously - what would ever be able to top this? this is a book that teaches you how to make crafts using cat hair. CAT HAIR! which is FREE! and which i already have in abundance! it is almost too easy! because i am mad poor right now, after paying my way through grad school. and relatively cheap grad school, to show you how poorly off i am. but i can make christmas presents out of cat hair for all of you! now if only i could find a book that magically grew time. there is a book on growing thyme, but it is pretty useless. unless you want to grow thyme, in which case it is perfect.

but back to cat hair!

now all i need is a book that tells me how to make crafts out of cat vomit, and i am totally set! I LOVE YOU JAPAN!!!

DADDY, DON'T READ THIS REVIEW, OR YOU WILL RUIN CHRISTMAS!!
OH NO, TOO LATE???
that caveat should probably gone at the beginning of the review.
Profile Image for da AL.
381 reviews463 followers
October 2, 2017
Talk about 'think outside the (cat) box'! Now I know what to do with cat hair. Adorableness! ...
Profile Image for Eyehavenofilter.
962 reviews103 followers
May 1, 2013
Why do I bother? nobody reads these but i soldier on...I THINK this book was written in all seriousness. After all the author IS Japanese and they are an incredibly crafty folk....no I am not being judgmental or racist! So shut up! I happen to love Origami. Anyway..... I've always wondered WHAT THE HELL,I could do with the kilos of cat hair that I collect off my kitties every month besides knit myself a "car-cozy".
Now I know! I can make the cutest little cat puppets in the world, or felt little kitties onto book covers, tote bags, coin purses, knick-knack boxes, pincushions or even make frame able "pussy portraits"( get your minds outta there! You evil people)
This is a step by step felting book for cat fur! Who Knew?
Profile Image for Adriana Scarpin.
1,708 reviews
May 23, 2025
Há anos via esse livro por aí e sempre tive curiosidade de saber o que tinha dentro dele e hoje descobri.
De fato é um livro de passo a passo de artesanato de pelos de gatos, com ideias interessantes, afinal, se temos que escovar os pelos dos felinos para evitar bolas de pelos, então nada mais lúdico do que transformá-los em artesanato.

Profile Image for Sarah.
68 reviews
April 1, 2012
This book was once suggested jokingly for our next read at an Interrobang Book Club meetup, and it's made some occasional subsequent appearances on the ballot, though it's never won the vote. It would definitely meet the "unique and unusual" criteria! Anyway, today I saw it in the Sunnyvale Public Library, and I figured I had to at least skim through it, even though I don't own a cat or even know anybody in close proximity who does. It's perhaps not quite as crazy as you'd think; the basic premise is to save your cat's hair when you brush it, make felt out of the cat hair, and use the cat hair felt to make little ornaments, mostly to use as decorations on larger projects made mostly out of regular storebought felt. So the idea is workable, though definitely odd. There are also quirky tidbits scattered through the book, such as admonitions not to shave your cat and a bar chart showing monthly cat hair shedding levels. In the end, this book reminded me that there are a whole lot of unusual people in this world. And you know, humanity is probably the better for it - how else would we have innovation, if everybody just accepted things the way they were and never tried something a little bit out there? Sometimes, when that happens, you get something revolutionary, like airplanes or iPods. And sometimes, you get crafting with cat hair.
Profile Image for Sarah.
224 reviews28 followers
October 12, 2011
I know a lot of people -- even fiber enthusiasts -- who are squicked by the idea of using cat or dog fur in projects. I've never really understood why -- what makes fur from a cat or a dog so fundamentally different than hair from a sheep (wool) or from a goat (cashmere) or from a rabbit (angora)? Certainly cat and dog fur isn't as well-suited to most crafting endeavors as these other fibers, but I've never heard an objection due to the utility of the fiber -- it's always emotional in nature. Strange.

Crafting With Cat Hair obviously seeks to persuade people that cat fur is, indeed, a perfectly legitimate material to craft with. Cat hair cannot be spun into yarn (at least not easily, and at least not so far as I am aware) due to its short staple length, so the book's projects are all based on felting. Wet felting is used to create adorable cat-hair finger puppets; other projects are things such as book covers, trinket boxes made of recycled milk cartons, and coin purses, all of which are made of other materials (generally manufactured wool felt, or recycled/repurposed sweaters in one case) while the cat hair is used to create a decorative embellishment via needle felting. In these cases, the cat hair is really almost an afterthought to the "main" project -- one could easily make the base project and them embellish it with beads, sequins, or other crafty doodads rather than with cat hair.

The projects are alternated in the book with two-page spreads on cat-related topics: how to best brush your cat; how much do cats shed; how cat hair is nearly odorless; how to care for your cat-hair projects; and so on. There are also ever-so-vaguely LOLcat-ish pictures throughout and, at the end, bios of the cats who "donated" their fur for the pictured projects.

The book seems to assume a knowledge of basic crafting skills. For example, in the pincushion project, the instructions call for sewing the pieces of the pincushion together inside out, turning it right-side out, stuffing it, and then sewing the hole closed, but there is no specific direction given as to how to do this. Still, though, there are no projects in the book that are difficult, and while absolute beginners may need to consult other sources for tips on how to do some of these things, everything here is still well within their reach. One thing that surprised me, however, was that there was only one brief mention of how sharp felting needles are, and that one mention was towards the end of the book. While "don't poke yourself with the needle" is a safety tip that should (one hopes) go without saying, it is extraordinarily painful to get poked with a barbed felting needle (speaking from experience here!) and I have never seen a felting book that didn't mention this upfront.

I would have known that Crafting With Cat Hair was Japanese in origin even if I hadn't known that it was. It just feels Japanese, between the voice, the subject matter, and the almost unbearable (in a good way!) cuteness. There are some things that were not fully adapted for an American audience -- several of the recommended cat brushes are Japanese products (or, at least, Japanese websites were given as sources), and at one point, the author suggests storing brushed cat hair in a seaweed tin until ready for use. I wouldn't know where to find a seaweed tin if my life depended on it.

All in all, this is a cute book that would appeal to crafters (if only for the novelty) and lovers of the quirky -- and, of course, cat people. And I must admit, I have a sudden hankering to make little tiny finger-puppet doppelgangers of my two cats. I've often joked that I could knit an entire new cat out of the amount of cat hair I sweep up, and perhaps this is the first step towards that.

Copy sent to me for review by Quirk Books.
Profile Image for Anna.
697 reviews136 followers
September 4, 2013
Wait, there's a book about crafting with your cat hair? Awesome.
The book was originally in Japanese, and it has retained the cuteness present in Japanese thru the translation, and of course the pictures and illustrations are cute too (ever seen a book in Japanese that wasn't cute? Me neither).
Most of the projects are with felting techniques. These are presented well with details, so they suit people who've never tried any kind of felting before.
Good techniques - now if only I got my kittehs to love some Furminator time so I could get more fur from them (other than the about half a cat worth of loose fur the Dyson collects every time I vacuum)... and a small confession: I had done some felting before, and only with cat fur. My previous felting items were some balls (about an inch in diameter), all from cat fur. Because I love seeing how I can build something from unusual materials, and a necklace with a few kitty fur "pearls" is just such a perfect thing to wear for someone totally owned by their kittehs... I will be definitely collecting more fur for more kittycrafts.
Profile Image for Marjorie Dawson.
69 reviews9 followers
August 10, 2017
This book is a delight for crafters and cat lovers. It's unique slant of using your cat hair to craft might strike some as odd but the books is so well put together, clean, neat and tidy that you love it at once.

It is a delicate combination of graceful advice and fun simple crafts that are accessible and achievable by most people There are brushing and cat care tips as well as inventive and cute little projects like necklaces, brooches and little bags all well laid out and easy to understand. If you want to preserve some of your kitty fur as a unique treasure then this is a good place to start.
Profile Image for David.
1,159 reviews59 followers
June 7, 2014
Got this for my mom, since she (at least at one point) collects brushed-out cat hair in a large zip lock bag. It contains detailed instructions and the list of supplies you'll need (including cat) to create cat fur crafts, such as Kindle covers. The book is serious about its cat crafts, and it looks like they all should work as described. That doesn't keep it from being funny: "When crafting with your cat, it is important to remove hair only by gentle brushing. Do not shave your cat."

Here's a sample page:

sample img from book
Profile Image for Shala Kerrigan.
Author 15 books36 followers
December 8, 2011
Crafting With Cat Hair : Cute Handicrafts to With Your Cat by Kaori Tsutaya and translated by Amy Hirschman is written by the author of a popular site, and is Japanese craft style in a very feline way. Using the soft hair you brush from your cat as well as store bought wool felt, you create projects for your home and as accessories for yourself.

Just so you know, I'm a cat lover since I was a kid. My very first pet in fact was a parakeet. I named my 'keet Pretty Kitty just to make sure my mom knew that a parakeet wasn't a cat and I still wanted a cat. People owned by cats can be a bit dotty about them. This review is for those people. The cat people who understand why we needed a book on crafting with cat hair.

The author loves cats, and gives lots of tips on proper brushing, using just the hair that sheds naturally and taking good care of your cat.

The projects are felted using the soft, fluffy undercoat that cats have in the winter and that brushes off in what seems like incredible amounts in the spring. The top hair, the hair you see and feel when you pet a cat and that seems to wind up everywhere tends to tangle and doesn't felt as well.

It starts with a cute wet felted finger puppet which is the image on the cover. Her instructions are clear on how to make the template and how to felt the puppet and she gives advice on making little collars. After that project, the rest are needle felted on a backing fabric. Wool felt is recommended. These is a great technique for lightly felted thrift store sweaters.

She gives instructions on how to sew, glue and make the projects in the book. There are adorable badges, trinket boxes, little zipper pouches that can be handsewn, pin cushions, purses and ideas for needle felting on clothing and accessories.A lot of the projects have their own little stencils you can trace from the pages. They are incredibly charming and sweet silhouette poses.

She also explains how to wash and care for your cat felted items since cat fur doesn't bond as strongly as wool does when felted.

With all the information, the projects and the love for cats that the author clearly has, this is a just a wonderful and inspiring book. Some of the projects as written repurpose things for crafty use. A lot of the rest can be done using thrifted sweaters lightly felted.

The full color photos of cats and the projects are well done. The instructions are clear, the technique is simple and the book is just charming.

[I received a complimentary copy of the book to review on my craft blog- Don't Eat the Paste. My reviews are always my honest opinion]
Profile Image for Heidi.
53 reviews5 followers
May 20, 2012
I found this book at one of our local libraries and HAD to get it. Was this book for real? Yes. It was indeed. The author instructs you how to gather cat hair from your cat, keep it free from pests and odors and turn it into "cute" handicrafts. I am a cat lover. Currently I live in a home with five cats (two are mine) so a supply of cat hair would certainly not be an issue for me. Still, I can't bring myself to make any of these handicrafts. Mostly this book was amusing and I had a lot of fun shocking people with it.
Profile Image for Molly.
3,208 reviews
January 16, 2012
Loooove it! Come on, how is cat hair any weirder than sheep hair? Yeah, my parents haven't been able to answer that any better than with a nervous laugh when I've said it, either. Anyway. It's really more about embellishing felt crafts with felted cat hair, less of making physical things with the hair. It's fairly fragile. But I love the idea, I love the Japanese, and I was positively delighted that my library bought this. And yes, I have a box full of harvested cat hair going.
23 reviews
January 23, 2012
I was hoping that I could make my fortune with cat hair crafting, as I have two cats, one of whom is long-haired. But I don't think so. It is a cute little book, though, especially for cat-lovers. This book is unintentionally funny with many admonitions that end with the phrase "is not how a good owner should behave." I would have to be much more dedicated to the craft of felting to pursue this activity. I'll stick with wool.
Profile Image for Danielle .
1,130 reviews59 followers
Want to read
October 28, 2011
Too funny. I need about a dozen of these, so I can give them to all my cat loving friends.
Profile Image for Margaret.
1,113 reviews
July 11, 2012
Adorkable! I found this book at my library's bookshop for 50 cents. Like new! Obviously its previous owner did not appreciate it as much as I do. Brush your cat and make a finger puppet today!
Profile Image for Jeimy.
5,404 reviews32 followers
November 16, 2019
I’m not gonna lie, I’m very intrigued. I may try my hand at some of these.
Profile Image for Dawn.
328 reviews2 followers
July 21, 2022
A little odd, but you know.
Profile Image for Pia.
47 reviews1 follower
Read
December 27, 2024
Should this be my new craft y'all
Profile Image for KRM.
224 reviews1 follower
January 3, 2021
Really cute, I loved the bios of the cats at the end! My only critique is that I wish there were more patterns to trace, haha
Profile Image for Malia.
1,165 reviews15 followers
September 23, 2017
Initally this is hilarious
And I didn't think I can collect that much fur to make anything. Trying during shefding season.
Profile Image for Stephanie Dagg.
Author 79 books52 followers
February 10, 2013
You might be tempted to say "eeuuw" when you see the title of this book, but don't! It's a fabulous, hands-on crafting book with well explained, various projects of little items you can make from hair from your beloved (or otherwise) kitty. You won't have to shave it bare - the projects only require small amounts that you can obtain from brushing or a little judicious snipping if you have a long-haired cat. They're felting projects and could be carried out using other animal hair or wool rovings (sheep, alpaca etc) if cat-based supplies are short.
The crafts are finger puppets, book covers portraits, tote bags, coin purses, knick knack boxes, pin cushions, badges, mittens and hats. In all cases apart from the finger puppets, the other projects consist of adding felted cat motifs to the larger objects. This is a very sensible approach since the amount of cat hair available is going to be limited, unless you have hundreds of cats! The results are very sweet.
A very unique and clever book which any crafty cat owner will love.
Profile Image for Sara.
679 reviews
February 28, 2016
This book shows you how to felt items with cat hair. Some cute ideas but no "real" crafts - except for the cat finger puppets, it's just embellishments. Especially not useful for me, since someone I live with is full of cat allergies.
The REAL reason to read this book is for all the adorable Japanese cats. And when I say adorable, I mean ADORABLE. This whole book is adorable, as is the writing.

UPDATE: Just got this again to flip through because I couldn't remember if I'd actually read it or not. One thought: one of the projects is little cat portraits using the felted hair from said cat. They're not large, and would be easy to display... maybe it's morose, but boy, it'd sure be nice to have a little reminder like that to display after the cat eventually passes away.
Profile Image for Laura.
382 reviews21 followers
December 14, 2014
This book is really cute, and greatly exceeded my expectations! (Yes, it is written in seriousness, though the tone is lighthearted--I get that a lot of people find the subject too strange, but I'm pretty strange myself. ^_^) I expected to learn patterns and techniques, but I also learned new-to-me information about cats, felting, and Japan. . . three subjects I thought I knew a lot about already! The crafts are really adorable (to me), and the author obviously really cares about and advocates for cats. It's all just very sweet, in that kind of indescribable way that Japanese craft books tend to be. . . and many cute pictures of cats are included, so all the better!
Profile Image for Carol Harlow.
105 reviews42 followers
October 3, 2011
Do you love your cat? Well Quirk Books has another great how to book out that tells you step by step how to make some great little projects with a little help from your cat! I know, how clever is that! This book will walk you through step by step to make Book Covers, Portraits, finger puppets, cat toys and even tote bags all with a little fur from your cat. These crafts will surely be one of a kind treasures. Just think, all of these projects are eco~friendly!
Profile Image for Anna.
215 reviews
November 14, 2016
I'm not sure I'll ever make any of these crafts, but it was fun to see all the ideas the author had for using cat hair! I found this book to be very humorous, but I'm still not sure if that was intentional or unintentional. The common-sense cat care tips sprinkled throughout the book added to my enjoyment--don't shave your cat! Don't brush your cat too much! Watch out for fleas!

Okay, maybe I'll try making a cat hair finger puppet one of these days.
Profile Image for Linda.
132 reviews
January 16, 2013
I have to that this is a different crafting idea than I had ever read about. After thinking about it I decided cat hair is no different than using any other animal hair. There are some cute ideas for crafting as well as some good information on taking care of your cat. If you are looking for something a bit different in crafting this book may be just what you are looking for.
Profile Image for Helene.
103 reviews4 followers
July 4, 2013
I got a newsletter from bookdepository recommending some books on quicky crafts - and this title popped up. Well, now all my christmas shopping is over and done with. Neighbourhood cats beware my shaving equipment...

Thank you Karen for a great review of this book, it is a long time since I laughed so hard..
Profile Image for Sherry.
28 reviews15 followers
April 29, 2017
This is an AWESOME book! The little creations are simple and fun with no special equipment required. A great way to make little treasures to remind you of your favorite feline friend for years to come. I might add that certain types of dog hair would work equally well with this technique. :-) Enjoy!
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