And sometimes, people go all-out, coming up with very creative ways to help their aging pets through their twilight years — from special ramps to mobile beds for hitting the beach. But one YouTuber went even further, building a homemade elevator all to make things easier for his beloved senior cat.
Liam Thompson is a YouTuber from New Zealand. He’s amassed 1.86 million subscribers to his channel, which boasts that he does “stupid stuff on camera.” Many videos show him building unusual homemade inventions, like a “robot butler” and a “cardboard submarine.” But Liam’s most recent video shows him building something with a heartwarming purpose: an elevator for his aging cat.
The cat is named Frodo, but Liam says he’s closer to Gandalf in age: the cat is nearly 20-years-old, very much a senior citizen in cat years. While his age has made it much harder to get around, Frodo still walks down the stairs every day in order to get to the backyard deck, where he lays in the sun.
So in order to help Frodo get around more easily, Liam decided to build an elevator to take him up and down the stairs. The project involves a cat-sized cart that can slide up and down a rail, akin to a roller coaster. The video shows Liam hard at work on the construction project, building and testing the elevator from scratch.
The test run goes “surprisingly well,” according to Liam, and he spends the next few days ensuring the track’s safety and painting it to make it look more appealing.
Finally, it’s time to let Frodo go for a ride. “Are you ready to go downstairs without having to move a muscle?” Liam asks his confused cat.
Everything works perfectly: the elevator smoothly takes Frodo down the stairs, and the cat heads off to his favorite sun spot — perhaps a little confused, but no doubt happy for the easy lift. Ten minutes later, the cat returns to the elevator, which takes him right back upstairs.
“I am absolutely fizzing right now,” the YouTuber says, adding that it’s the “greatest day of [his] life.”
The heartwarming video has now gone viral with over 800,000 views in just a few days.
