Enlighten me about cat trees

[forgotten_aria]

So I've never owned a cat tree before. They always struck me as something that it was likely that my cats would ignore and then it would just clutter up my house, but I recently read that part of keeping cats healthy is giving them somewhere they can climb and stretch. So I started to look into them. I was hoping for one that used real tree stumps with bark, but they are horribly expensive (cat trees are fairly expensive in general.) So I looked around some more, and I think that this would be a reaonable tree to own. I espeically like that it's not covered in carpeting. It would fit behind the weight machine. It is, however, still a lot of money so...

does anyone have any wisdom about cat trees?

Stories about your cats using them, not using them, them ebing an important part of your cat's life or just something that made your friends go "ew" or somethign that collected dust, but it was expensive enough you weren't willing to throw it out?

I could just buy a 2x4 and wrap it in siasal rope.

Comments

[mama-pipa.livejournal.com]

My cat's tree isn't nearly as impressive, but he likes it, and I think it was worth every penny.

[katybeth]

That looks like a good price for a fairly nice cat tree.

I've never had a cat tree, though I've thought about getting one if I had the space. My cats seem mostly content without climbing up high, but a safe climbing space may be nice for kittens. I think providing good scratching posts is important, and they should be tall enough for the cat to stretch all the way up. We made a tall scratching post from a pair of 2x4's, some plywood, and scrap carpet, that the cats love. The also like the storebought one we have, but many storebought posts are barely tall enough for kittens to really stretch.

It's good to have more than one texture available. Some cats prefer to scratch on sisal, some prefer carpet, some probably prefer other things.

All that said, I had just one carboard scratcher on the floor for over a year, and Narshie was fine with it.

[trysha.livejournal.com]

On Barking Mad they recommend that you carpet one of your walls,. I've always thought that would be amusing.

We have a big cat tree in durham, it's all carpet covered and has 3 levels, a "house" on the bottom, a platform in the middle, and a "tray" on the top. It's also got a danging puff ball from the top. The cats love it. Lili hardly ever leaves the top.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

I've made some nice scratching posts of 1x6's wrapped in rope and screwed to the doorway. But those are completely different from cat trees.

I used to have a gigantic 8' tall cat tree. One of my cats ("Elsie") loved it and spent most of her hours in it, sleeping in one of the tubes in top. (We knicknamed her "Tube Cat", and only partially because of her eating habits.) My other cat, Meep, completely ignored it.

After Elsie died, Meep climbed the cat tree a couple of times and sat where Elsie used to sleep, and then reverted to ignoring it. I gave the gigantic tree to a guy with two kittens, who use it to escape from the household dog.

So of a sample size of four cats, three regularly used it, and one ignored it.

[aerynne.livejournal.com]

Ert's cats adore theirs and one or the other is always climbing up it or sitting in it and staring out the window or stretch-scratching it or whatever. :)

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

I'm a big beleiver that you should give hte cat something that is a completely different material to claw and climb than anything you care about in your house. How are they supposed to know the difference between that carpet and the on your floor.

But other than that, you suggestion is still good. Thanks.

[gkjfdh.livejournal.com]

Most of the cats I've known have loved their cat trees, but I've only ever seen the cats sitting in the topmost perch. The rest of the tree just seems to exist solely so they can get to the top and survey their domain.