Cat Trees Are Actually Really Important For Cats' Well-Being, According To A Behaviorist

If you stock a location with a cat, you’ve astir apt noticed: Cats thin to question retired heights. What cat owner among america hasn’t caught their favored leaping onto counters oregon soaring onto shelves truthful precocious up that we can’t scope them without a ladder oregon stepping stool?

This emotion of precocious spaces is portion of cats’ earthy instincts, according to Stephanie Merlin, a certified feline behaviorist and feline well-being educator who runs the fashionable Instagram relationship @thefulfilledfeline.

“Cats are some predator and prey, truthful having a precocious vantage constituent is simply a earthy mode to assistance them consciousness harmless and secure,” Merlin wrote. “This isn’t conscionable astir amusive and games; it’s profoundly rooted successful their biology.”

One mode to enactment your cat’s evolutionary request for heights is done investing successful a cat tree, a dedicated operation with aggregate tiers for cats to ascent and perch on. The benefits of feline trees “go mode beyond offering vertical space,” Merlin explained. “Many see scratching surfaces, cozy beds, hidden nooks and plentifulness of spots to leap and explore.

Read connected for Merlin’s recommendations connected however to take the champion feline histrion for your pet, including 1 of her favourite models and much feline trees selected by us.

Are Cat Trees Good For Cats?

Cat trees crucially supply cats with abstraction to explicit their earthy instincts, Merlin noted, and failing to supply this abstraction tin person consequences for you and your pet. “Without these outlets, cats tin go bored and frustrated, starring to accent and perchance destructive behaviors, specified arsenic scratching furniture,” she explained. Cats whitethorn adjacent “hid[e] retired of fearfulness due to the fact that they deficiency the information of a precocious vantage point.”

Especially if your household has 2 oregon much cats, a feline histrion “can beryllium a game-changer,” Merlin wrote.

This is because, successful multi-cat homes, cats are fundamentally sharing their territory and, successful their view, competing for constricted resources. “Without capable abstraction and abstracted ‘pathways’ wherever cats tin debar each other, conflicts are much likely,” arsenic good arsenic accrued tension, Merlin explained. “Vertical abstraction offers a fantastic mode to grow a cat’s ‘real estate’ and debar these conflicts.”

Why Trust BuzzFeed Shopping?

BuzzFeed Shopping is work journalism first: our writers and editors walk each time buying truthful you don’t person to, vetting products, fact-checking marque claims, and surfacing what really helps successful existent life. We halfway readers implicit revenue, urge products with authenticity (using existent experiences, not ad-speak), and bespeak our divers audience, inclusive of a assortment of terms points, people, and needs. We chopped done fake deals, favour utile info implicit glossy fluff, and urge some fund and splurge options with discourse truthful you tin determine what’s close for you — and inactive person a small amusive on the way.