Angels seeking Guinness record for cat tree

By BILLY LUDT

bludt@vindy.com

CANFIELD

A local animal shelter’s cat scratching tree is more than 2 feet taller than the current world record holder.

The Guinness World Record for world’s tallest cat scratching tree is 16 feet 10 inches. But Angels for Animals at 4750 W. South Range Road has a cat tree that stands at 19 feet 51⁄2 inches tall.

Processing for Angels’ world record submission will take about 12 weeks.

Jason Cooke, a volunteer at Angels, recently read that Youngstown State University is going to attempt to break the Guinness record for most people dressed as a penguin. With record breaking on his mind, Cooke said he wondered if there was a set record for tallest cat scratching tree.

On Tuesday, Angels for Animals co-founder Diane Less traversed the cat tree with a tape measure in hand and determined the structure’s actual height.

“It’s nice to submit this, and hopefully it is the record, but I think it’s more about bringing attention to the shelter and making people realize how they help animals in the Valley,” Cooke said.

After a little bit of research, Cooke determined that Shelley and Joseph DelRocco of West Linn, Ore., currently hold the record. Cooke said he knew Angels’ was bigger.

Angels for Animals was built on the site of a slaughterhouse that boasted the largest killing floor in Ohio in the 1980s. The footprint of the slaughterhouse’s killing floor is where Angels’ largest cat room resides, and in it is the towering cat tree that Less created.

After some rejected design ideas, including one with suspended ceramic cows and pigs, Less settled on making a cat tree to fill that space. She said the metal tree is now a sign of new life where the killing floor once was.

“It’s a huge draw here for the shelter,” Less said. “People love to come see this tree and the cats climbing in it.”

The tree, referred to as the Tree of Marie, is named after Marie Stillings, who donated money to have the sculpture built.

By bending pipe cleaners and setting them together, Less came up with the design for the tree. She said she drew visual inspiration for the design from saguaro cactuses.

“It was before the days of 3-D programs where we could build it ahead of time,” Less said.

For five days, she and a welder put the tree together piece by piece. They removed window panes in the cat room and brought each length of pipe through one at a time.

In its current iteration, the Tree of Marie’s branches are lined with Gutter Guard, and its flat pods are topped with athletic turf. Cats can be seen climbing to some of the tree’s highest branches and resting on its pods.