I was on a business trip to Osaka recently, and when I arrived at the airport on the way back home, I had a few hours to kill. The gift shop in the main lobby had a number of little laser-cut plywood kits for sale, and I figured I might as well buy one and see what it’s like to build. There’s a large variety to the kits, from animals to musical instruments (a piano, cello and guitar) to big $60 units for making Himeji Castle and a 2′-tall Ferris wheel. While I was tempted to go big, I have no place to keep finished kits like that, so I settled on the Sitting Cat for 1,000 yen ($9 USD.) (I also had a bowl of ice cream for dinner.)

The kit comes in a flat envelope, which includes 2 sheets of thin, pre-cut plywood, and the instruction sheet. The instructions are pictorial only, but still pretty easy to follow. The pieces have to be punched out, and that was probably the most time-consuming part. They do stick in the main form, and you have to be careful because they will break. What may have helped the most might have been if I’d had a cutter knife, and just removed bits of the main form to make taking the pieces out easier.

The pieces are interlocking and force-fit, so you don’t need glue. This is also good since I had to take everything apart a few times because I got the pieces in the wrong sequence. I didn’t see a suggested assembly time, and I wasn’t really paying attention to when I started. I did have a specific deadline, in that I wanted to get past the security checkpoint shortly after check-in opened up (the airline here didn’t allow check-in until 90 minutes before boarding). Either way, I think I took 90 minutes total. If I ever make another one of these, I know I’ll be a lot faster now that I understand what I’m doing.

There’s a 1″ wide strip along the length of one of the sheets that contains an entire backup collection of small pieces that are most likely to break. This was a lifesaver, because one piece shattered as I was trying to punch it out, and a second piece broke as I was trying to push it into place on the main assembly. I needed those backups.

I waited until I got home to take the last two photos of the completed cat, because the lighting is better here than in the restaurant. Overall, it was fun, although a bit frustrating, to build. Next time, I’d want sandpaper to open up some of the notches to make the pieces fit together a little more smoothly.

Most cats are board. This one just doesn’t bother to hide it.