Knitting Cat Sweaters

"Why would you knit your cat a sweater?" you ask. Yes, they're perfectly capable of staying warm on their own. However, it is hilarious. I think I laughed for several minutes straight the first time I put a sweater on my cat. It happened to be the one on the left. This was also my first attempt at making any kind of sweater, and incidentally, it was good practice for making "real" sweaters (you know, for babies and stuff). A couple of things about my obese diabetic cat Nalla: She is very tolerant (not all cats will allow you to put a sweater on them). She is an odd shape (i.e. fat, but in a weird way... she's kind of gourd shaped). She also has excess skin that hangs down around her belly and arms. This ensures that no sweater pattern will ever fit her as written. It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but there's an argyle pattern on the front. This sweater turned out really nice considering I used crap yarn (i.e. Red Heart) and I ignored the gauge on purpose to make the sweater bigger than written (I ignore gauge a lot, and it usually works out all right... but I'll need to do a future post on "when ignoring gauge goes horribly, hilariously wrong").

Anyways, when I put this on her she looked like a sausage and refused to move around. It was too short and the arms were too restrictive for our little fatty. We ended up sending this sweater to a friend of ours with small dogs. Sadly, this pattern is no longer available on the internets (which is where I've found all of my cat sweater patterns). I'll have to type it up and post it on here sometime. Always print out your patterns, since you may not be able to find them again!

My favorite sweater that I've made so far is the Mandarin Cat Sweater. I even tried to adjust this one as indicated in the pattern and it still wasn't quite right. Oh, how kitty wishes she were as elegant as the siamese cat in the orginal post! I should have made this one a few inches longer in the torso and a few inches shorter in the arms. Because she's got fat hanging down around her arms, this makes her legs seem a lot shorter. She was basically tripping over the arms. I also didn't like the yarn I used for the black trim. I was worsted weight and was a little too stiff and heavy in comparison to the cream colored yarn.

The last sweater I'll talk about is the Cat Hoodie, which on any other cat (or dog) would be really cute. This is the only sweater that I've made that I can accurately say fits her. I believe I increased needle sizes to make it bigger. I also made it longer in the torso section. I would have liked to include the sleeves, but once again, fatty arms doesn't tolerate sleeves. If I were making this again I would have lengthened the hoodie part to make it a little more functional.

I decreased the needle size to make the same sweater for my parents' dog last Christmas. The hood on that one

is basically decorative. It's way too small (and dogs kind of have long necks it seems). I don't think I could have made it functional without it looking funny. I also shortened the sleeves and it turned out super cute.