How to choose a cat tree: height, footprint, stability and what the scratching survey found

Working out how to choose a cat tree is harder than it should be, because the category sells on photographs. Towers are described by how many levels they have and what colour the fabric is, and almost never by the two things that decide whether the cat uses it and whether it stays upright.

There is, unusually for this corner of the pet market, some real published data to work with. We are going to lean on it, including where it is inconvenient.

The survey worth knowing about

Wilson et al. (2016), in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, surveyed cat owners about scratching behaviour and got 4,105 usable responses, the large majority from the United States. It is indexed on PubMed and there is a free full text at eScholarship.

It is owner-reported rather than directly observed, which is a real limitation, and associations in it are not proof of cause. With that said, four of its findings bear directly on buying a tower.

Height mattered. Among owners reporting unwanted scratching elsewhere in the home, posts taller than three feet were associated with less of it: 55.2 percent versus 64.7 percent for shorter posts.

Levels mattered. Cat trees with one or more levels were associated with less unwanted scratching than the alternatives, 55.3 percent versus 62.6 percent. Cats most often used trees with two or more levels, and simple vertical posts. Horizontal posts lying on the floor were used less. Wall-mounted posts and single-level trees were used least of all.

Rope won where it was offered. Carpet was the surface most often provided, at 61.2 percent of homes, with rope just behind at 57.8 percent. But rope was the surface most used. Among cats nine years and under, rope was the stated preference for 32.5 percent, carpet 25.1 percent and cardboard 18.2 percent. For cats over ten the order changed: carpet 24.7 percent, rope 22.9 percent, cardboard 19.6 percent.

Rewarding use changed use. Owners who rewarded their cat for using a post reported more frequent use of it, 80.4 percent against 67.7 percent for those who never did. This is the cheapest finding in the paper and probably the most actionable.

More posts did not mean more problems, incidentally. Unwanted scratching was reported in 60.2 percent of homes with up to seven posts and 32.4 percent of homes with more than ten, which is the opposite of what you would expect if cats scratched furniture for want of alternatives.

Decision one: height

Over three feet, on the evidence above. Our tower is 48.8 inches, which is about four feet and comfortably over that line, and we would have told you the same thing if it were not.

Beyond "over three feet" the evidence runs out, and taller stops being automatically better for two reasons. A tall tower with the same base is a tall tower that is easier to tip. And a cat has to be able to get down as well as up, which for an older or heavier cat means the top platform should not be a drop.

The useful question is not how tall but how tall relative to the room. A tower that reaches near ceiling height in a room with nothing else elevated is doing a lot of work. The same tower in a room with a bookcase, a windowsill and a wardrobe is one option among several, which is what the 2013 AAFP and ISFM Feline Environmental Needs Guidelines are getting at when they insist on choice: a minimum of two resting areas, each in its own location.

Decision two: footprint and stability

This is where the category is weakest, and there is a regulatory reason for it.

The mandatory United States tip-over standard for furniture is ASTM F2057. Under the STURDY Act, the Consumer Product Safety Commission adopted ASTM F2057-23 as a mandatory federal standard, effective for units manufactured from 1 September 2023. The scope of that standard is clothing storage units: dressers, chests, bureaus. You can see the scope on the ASTM listing, and there is a plain summary of the rule's adoption from SGS.

Cat furniture is not covered. There is no mandatory tip-over test a cat tower must pass in the United States, and consequently there is no certification to look for and nothing for a seller to put on a box. That is not a scandal, it is just a gap, and it means stability is something you have to assess yourself.

What to assess, in order:

Base dimension against height. This is the one number you can often work out from a listing or a photograph. A wide base under a tall post is stable; a tall post on a small square is not. Compare base width to total height and treat anything where the base is less than about a third of the height with suspicion. That is a rule of thumb rather than engineering, and it is better than nothing, which is what the category otherwise gives you.

Mass, and where it is. Weight low down is stability. A heavy base is worth more than a heavy top platform, and a tower that weighs very little for its size is telling you something about the material.

The cantilever. The real tipping load is not a cat sitting on the top. It is a cat landing on the outer edge of the highest platform from a jump. Look at how far platforms stick out from the centre column, and look at how they are fixed to it.

Whether it can be anchored. Some towers have provision for a wall strap. If yours does, use it. If you have a very tall tower, children, or a cat who launches, anchoring removes the question entirely.

Fasteners. Which brings us to the thing nobody mentions: bolted furniture under repeated lateral load works loose. A tower that was rigid in month one and wobbles in month eight has usually not broken, it has just come loose. Put a spanner on it twice a year. This single habit does more for stability than most purchasing decisions.

Decision three: surfaces

The survey points at rope, with the caveat that preference shifted toward carpet in cats over ten. Rope means sisal or similar: a coarse, vertical, shreddable surface a cat can hook claws into and pull down against.

Practical guidance: when you look at a tower, count the scratching surfaces and note what they are made of and which way they run. A tower that is mostly platforms and sleeping boxes, with one short wrapped section, is furniture with a scratching afterthought. If the tower you want is short on rope, buy a plain vertical sisal post separately and put it next to the tower. They are inexpensive, the survey suggests more posts is not a problem, and you are then covered whichever surface your cat turns out to prefer.

Check what any tower you are considering actually offers here, ours included, rather than taking the word "scratching" in a product title as a specification. We would rather you asked us than assumed.

Decision four: wood or carpet

Mostly an ownership question rather than a cat question, and the survey does not settle it.

Carpet-wrapped towers are softer, warmer, usually cheaper, and they hold fur, dust and odour. They are difficult to clean properly and they look tired faster. Wooden towers are easier to wipe down, hold less smell, generally look better in a room you live in, and give the cat less to grip on the structural parts, which is why the surfaces matter so much on a wooden one.

Ours is wooden, at 48.8 inches, for $119. That is a design preference about living with the thing for years, not a claim that cats prefer wood. If a cheaper carpeted tower suits your house better, buy the cheaper carpeted tower.

The part that costs nothing

Two findings from the survey are free to act on and probably matter more than which tower you buy.

Placement. Among owners with a scratching problem, 69.3 percent already had a post in the same room as the damaged furniture, and about half had one within one to five feet of it. Proximity alone was not solving it. So put the tower where the cat already chooses to be, not where it fits best, and where it has a sightline, because a lookout with nothing to look at gets ignored.

Reward. Praise or a treat when the cat uses it. The gap in the survey between owners who rewarded use and those who never did was over twelve percentage points of reported use. Nothing you can buy for $119 is as reliable as that.

The short version

Over three feet tall, more than one level, a base wide enough for the height, rope somewhere on it, bolts you retighten, placed where your cat already goes, and rewarded when used. There is no mandatory tip-over standard for this category, so the stability judgement is yours and the geometry is how you make it.

Our tower is 48.8 inches of wood at $119. The evidence above supported the height decision and the multi-level decision. It did not tell us to use wood, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.