He used to go into the garage, climb on top of Mindy's car, jump from there to the garage door opener, and then jump from there up into the ceiling rafters. The problem was that he had a hard time getting back down by himself, and Mindy was worried that he was going to fall and get hurt.
So, we decided to build him a ladder (above) to make it easier for him to get up and down on his own. My brother, Chris, and I built the first version using 2"x4"s mounted to her garage wall and wooden stes\ps every 18" or so. The steps were covered with indoor/outdoor carpeting. Each step was mounted to the spine of 2"x4"s using two metal corner brackets. It looked good but, unfortunately, it turned out not to be strong enough. Lucky is a heavy cat and when he jumped down from one step to the next, the metal corner brackets we used just couldn't handle the force.
After the first few months of Lucky using Ladder 1.0, several of the steps were bent down or knocked off completely. So that's when we built Lucky's Ladder 2.0. This time all of the steps were enclosed within a frame of 2"x4"s so they were completely supported. As with the first version, the steps alternate left and right, about every 18" in height.
This version is very solid and doesn't move at all whenever Lucky races up and down it. Now that he is used to it (which only took a couple of days) he is fearless on it, whether going up or down. He will go from the ground all the way up into the rafters in less than 10 seconds, which is pretty fun to watch!