With the TLC Cats, Cat Trees Still Rule

After much anticipation our new cat trees arrived. The ones we had in Ann Arbor were still in good shape but were more than ten years old, so we decided instead to replace them when we got settled in our new home.

We spent hours shopping the Internet, evaluating an unbelievable number of styles and price points, but in the end decided to stay with Angelical Cats’ trees. We had them before and knew the cats liked them and that they hold up well cosmetically over time. Still, we wanted to try one of the more contemporary trees too – so we also ordered a Little Lotus from Refined Pet Products. Both choices met all of our criteria for the “purrfect” tree/scratching post – which were:

• Attractive enough to put in our living room

• Easy to maintain -- no tight corners to trap cat fur and no carpet where it wasn’t needed or couldn’t be cleaned using a handheld vacuum.

• Older-cat friendly – perches reasonably close together for easy jumping and no perches over about 4 feet in the air to protect against falling on hard floors

• Stable enough that they won’t fall over if a cat takes a running leap at it

• Shippable by UPS or Fed Ex to keep costs down.

The Little Lotus arrived first -- about ten days after we did -- and we were very glad to see it. With no cat trees in place, the cats were already finding other things to scratch -- chairs, ottomans, sofas – and we needed to get their trees in place quickly to prevent bad habits from forming.

The Little Lotus shipped knocked down to economize on production costs – which we expected -- but we were disappointed with the barebones instructions – little more than a series of cryptic diagrams – and the fact that they didn’t key the pieces to make assembly fool proof. Without keying, you could (and we did) put things together the wrong way – losing a fair amount of time to undoing assembly mistakes. And, we were also disappointed in the cosmetic quality of the tree. There were scuffed-looking paint areas on the edges – not at all furniture quality. Nevertheless we finally had a much-needed cat tree and moved it into our living room, hoping to see the cats climbing (and scratching) all over it with enthusiasm.

And -- although, many of the cats did come over to see it -- not one cat climbed it or scratched at it! In fact the only part of the tree that caught anyone’s fancy was the base – a cleverly designed hidey-hole for catnapping. From the day our Little Lotus arrived, someone could be found sleeping in it. But for whatever reason, the tree itself has stayed idle with no scratching or perching. We wondered if they simply didn’t like the tree or if their new extra wide windowsills were simply more attractive perches. As finicky as cats are, we knew we would only know the answer when the Angelical Cats trees arrived – which happened about a week later.

Unlike the Little Lotus that’s readily available from large retailers like Petco and Amazon, Angelical Cat builds most of their trees to order – and they ship fully-assembled -- so they take a bit longer to get – but they’re well worth the wait. No sooner had we un-boxed the larger of the trees– a double-perch contemporary – there were cats all over it -- taking turns on the perches and scratching both the carpet and the exposed wood posts. We knew immediately that cat trees still rule.

We still had one more surprise, though. When we opened up the second box, we found Angelical had made a mistake on our order. Instead of receiving three of their single-perch trees, we had three curious-looking 10” high perches. We immediately notified them and they’re building the ones we ordered on an expedited schedule. And, they graciously offered to let us keep the 3 little ones without charging us for shipping and discounting their retail 30%. We took them up on their offer and to our surprise find the little perches pretty handy. They do double-duty as steps for the older cats to climb the real cat tree and the larger less-nimble cats simply like to perch on them.

I’ve long been a fan of Angelical Cats trees for many reasons – and one of them is simply because they have such a wide assortment of sizes and shapes. If you buy an assortment, you can use them stand-alone or construct larger trees from the individual pieces -- as we have in our photo by putting a small perch next to the larger tree. You can rearrange them to your heart’s content and in the process give your cats something new to explore when you do.

Having cat trees in place makes us all feel more at home – and it’s a relief to know when we hear the signature scratching noises of cats being cats that it’s their furniture they’re scratching, not ours.