A few details - my cat is 6.1 pounds, a female bengal mix, and INCREDIBLY picky - I would suggest anyone who is about to buy a cat tree first make sure your cat will LIKE the material it's made out of first!I bought my cat this incredibly nice and plush fleece cat bed [...]and she refused to touch the thing even when it was covered in cat nip and had strings/bells dangling over it. So needless to say, I was extremely anxious whether or not she would even like this cat tree whatsoever.Thankfully the material, faux fur, turned out to be something she truly enjoys and she was already coming around and rubbing herself against the tree before I was done assembling it!Assembly was a breeze, the instructions were really quite straightfoward - if you have ever put together Lego's in your life, this will not post any problems for you. Like other people have said it is amazing how much they fit into a small little box. All the tools and screws are provided for you, so you won't need a separate set of tools of your own.The material itself is compressed particle board, which smells like the wood section of [...]but intensified with more glue. I would *highly* suggest airing this bad boy out or at the very least vacuuming it before your cat's delicate nose gets a whiff of it (it definitely gave me a sore throat from all the chemically smelling fumes).That being said, both the fur and the board material is pretty rugged and sturdy, I was initially afraid at having faux fur be the covering material but the way that it's glued onto the boards makes me feel if my cat ever does rip a hole in it, the rip will not propagate and just uncover the whole thing. One thing though - because they used glue to adhere the fur onto the board, there were some spots that were "rough" where excess glue is hidden underneath the fur cloth, it wouldn't have bothered me at all but there was a particularly big glob of it that is directly infront of the little tepee which my cat loves to sit in.My cat has already made herself home in the tree and has been actively jumping around from level to level, and the tree hasn't even come close to being tipped over so I feel the thing is pretty well balanced. Both the tepee and the upper room are big enough to fit my 6.1 lb cat nicely - and I've even added pillows/rug cushioning, which there's room for, as the faux fur material is soft but not thick or cushioned.A couple of notes - the hammock on the bottom is either too low or too awkward to get to due to pillars next to it, my cat hasn't even tried to look at it. The rope ladder I ended up not attaching because it just eats space and it doesn't seem like my cat wants anything to do with it. Also, the middle board on the long left pole where the top of the rope ladder would have been attached to, I rotated it sideways so my cat could have more of a ledge to use to jump to the upper level with the room, without rotating it, the upper L-shaped level with the room is perfectly flush above it vertically making it hard for my cat to jump up/down. The top basket also hasn't been used I think because it's hard to get to - my cat would have to jump from the top of the room to the small pole to enter the basket which I think is too precarious for her at this stage. Lastly, the topmost platform is insanely hard for her to get to for the same reason, maybe I just don't have that active of a cat, but I feel if there was a platform by the basket it would help her out alot in ascending the tree.All in all, for the price of [$] without tax or shipping costs, this thing cannot be beat! Took me 30-45 mins to assemble by myself and my cat is loving every moment of it!"..." Read more
- MvC in san diego, ca