She's made them by hand for 64 years. Now her final collection is heading out the door.

Anika Vale, a rug maker in Vermont, is closing her workshop this summer. Her handmade Seven Cats rug — the large half-moon design she's made for years — is leaving the studio one final time.

Putney, Vermont. The kind of morning where the windows are open before seven and the cats are sitting in the same square of sun they were sitting in last summer — and the summer before that. Anika Vale leans over her worktable in the back room of the house she and her husband Raymond bought in 1979. Spools of wool in saffron, plum, charcoal, and burnt orange line the wooden shelves behind her. A calico cat named Junebug is folded into a patch of light by the window, half asleep.

This summer is different. It's her last in the workshop.

"I'm seventy-two," she says, not looking up from the wool in her lap. "I can still do the work. I just can't do it as long anymore. My right thumb gives out after about four hours now. It didn't used to."

She glances at the small flock of half-finished rugs on the shelf opposite her — each one with seven cartoon cats arranged across a soft, half-moon shape, the way she's been making them for years.

"This is the last batch. After July, the workshop closes for good."

64 years and three generations of wool

Anika does not call herself an artist. She was a librarian, she will say, and the rug making is something else — something older.

Her grandmother Marguerite came to Vermont from Trois-Rivières, Quebec, with a family knowledge of making rugs by hand. Wool from worn-out coats. Burlap from feed sacks. A hook carved from a piece of birch.

"My grandmother taught me the summer I turned eight. She sat me down on her back porch, put the wool in my hand, and said, 'Anika, you finish what you start, even if it takes you all summer.' It took me all summer. The rug was awful. She hung it on her wall anyway."

For the next sixty-four years, Anika made rugs in evenings and on weekends. Through library school. Through raising her family. Through Raymond, her husband, and through losing him.

"After Raymond died, I just kept working. The wool didn't ask me any questions. That helped."

By her own account, Anika has made rugs for most of her life. Some years brought only a few; other years, when the house was quiet and she had time, brought many more. The brass thimble she still wears every morning came down through her family and was passed to Anika the summer she first sat on the porch to learn.

"It outlasted my grandmother. It'll probably outlast me," Anika says, running her thumb across the worn rim. "That is how you know it was built right."

My grandmother used to say wool remembers everyone who's touched it. I don't know if that's true. But I've never once made a rug that didn't feel like it belonged to somebody before it left this room. — Anika Vale, Putney, Vermont

What makes Anika’s rugs stand apart

What sets these apart isn't the cats — charming as they are. It's how they're built: as a piece of real, traditional handcraft, made the way her grandmother taught her.

Each rug is built from heavy-pile wool yarn worked by hand into a cotton-backed canvas, then finished on the underside with a bonded non-slip backing that keeps the rug planted on hardwood, tile, or laminate. The seven cats on the front aren't printed — they're worked into the rug fiber by fiber, with their colors, whiskers, and expressions made from the wool itself. They won't peel, crack, or wash off, because there's nothing on the surface to come off.

That difference matters more than it sounds.

If you've shopped for a cat-themed rug online in the last year, you've almost certainly seen photos that look very much like Anika's — a half-moon shape, seven cartoon cats across the front, the same general arrangement. Many of those rugs are printed. The image is heat-pressed onto a thin synthetic mat, and what arrives at your door is essentially a piece of fabric with a picture on it. The cats are an image, not a texture. Run your hand across one and you feel nothing.

Anika's rugs are the opposite of that. The whiskers stick up. The plum-colored cat is actually plum-colored wool. The black cat is actually black wool. You can feel each of the seven cats under your bare feet on a cold morning, and you can see the dimension of them from across the room.

"I've had customers send me photos of the printed version they ordered before they found me," Anika says, shaking her head a little. "Sad little things. Flat. Slippery. That's not handcraft — that's a photograph someone glued onto a doormat and called a rug."

The rugs are designed for the place she imagines them: an entryway, a kitchen reading nook, the small landing between the hallway and the front door. Low-pile enough not to catch on a vacuum, dense enough not to crush after a winter of boots. The cotton-poly underside is machine-washable on a cool, gentle cycle when accidents happen — and they will. Cats are cats.

"It's a working rug, not a museum rug. Cats walk on it. Boots walk on it. That's the whole point."

"I keep all of them. That's the part of this that matters."

Anika pulls a battered wooden cigar box out from a low shelf and sets it on the table. The lid still smells faintly of cedar.

"These are letters from customers. I started getting them in 2021, when Claire — my daughter — first set up a small shop for me online. My granddaughter Emma has been running it since she turned fourteen. People still write actual letters every now and then. I keep every one of them."

She slides one out, dated April 2024:

Dear Mrs. Vale — I lost my cat Mabel of seventeen years in February. I ordered your rug because the seven little cats on it looked like every cat I'd ever loved, all together at once. It sits in front of my bed now. My new cat, Toast, sleeps on it every single night. I think she knows. Thank you for making something that holds that much. — Customer letter, Charleston, SC

Anika reads it through and folds it carefully back into the box.

"That's why I'm still doing this at seventy-two. Letters like that one."

What sets the Seven Cats rug apart

• 100% handmadeOne rug at a time, by Anika, in her Vermont workshop — no factory, no assembly line, no second pair of hands.
• Real wool pile — not a printThe seven cats are built from the wool itself, fiber by fiber. They can't peel, crack, or wash off the way printed graphics do.
• Non-slip backingA bonded cotton-poly underside keeps the rug planted on hardwood, tile, or laminate. No slipping. No bunching at the door.
• Made for everyday lifeDense low-pile construction, machine-washable on a cool gentle cycle. Built to live in your entryway — not on a wall.
• Generously sizedMeasures 35" wide × 24" deep — wide enough for a front hallway, a kitchen sink mat, or the landing in front of the fireplace. Not a small doormat.
• Current variantsThe Home of Craft product page lists six Seven Cats variants; check it for live availability.

The end of an era — Anika’s final collection

At the end of July, Anika expects to close the workshop. Her daughter has been asking her to move closer to family.

"The house is too big for one person and two cats," Anika says with a small shrug. "It is time."

There is another reason, too — one she does not mention as readily.

"I don't have anyone to pass this on to. None of the grandkids want to spend years learning to do this the way my grandmother taught me. I don't blame them — it is not the world I learned this for. But it does mean when I close the workshop, that is the end of it."

On the shelves of the back room sit finished Seven Cats rugs — the result of a winter spent completing pieces she had cut and started over the past year. Her final run. The last collection set to come out of the Vale workshop.

Many, she expects, will go out as gifts — daughters buying for mothers, partners buying for spouses, friends buying for the cat lover they always struggle to shop for. The appeal is easy to understand.

"My granddaughter is helping me get the last of them out. She knows the internet better than I ever will. I make the rugs. She handles the rest." Anika laughs quietly. "It is the best division of labor we've ever had in this family."

The current Home of Craft product page lists each Seven Cats variant at $49.

"I want them out there — in somebody's hallway, in front of the fireplace, by the kitchen door. That is where they were made to be."

She nods toward Junebug, who has wandered over and is sitting squarely on the half-finished rug on the table — exactly the way she always does.

"And maybe with a cat sitting on them. That's how you know you got one of mine."

What customers are saying

The short version

This is the rug you'll move from room to room, just so you can keep looking at it.

Each Seven Cats rug is made entirely by hand by Anika Vale in her Vermont workshop — one rug at a time, the way her grandmother taught her, the way her grandmother's mother taught her in Quebec a hundred years ago. Cotton-backed, wool-piled, non-slip on the underside, machine-washable on a cool cycle. Built to live in your entryway, your kitchen, or in front of the fire — not on a wall.

And every time you walk past it and one of your cats has commandeered it (and they will), you'll get that little "of course she has" moment, all over again.

Thank you, Anika. 🧶

Choose your Seven Cats rug on Home of Craft

The current product page lists six Seven Cats designs at $49.

Choose from Seven Cats Classic, Seven Cats Flowers, Seven Cats Classic Rectangular, Colorful hearts & Cats, Wild Cats, or Sunset Cats.

For current availability, shipping information, and any applicable return terms, consult the product page before purchase.