Indoor cats get bored in a way that shows up as broken things. Mine live in a one-story ranch house in Grand Junction, and by the middle of the afternoon the sun has moved off the living room carpet and both of them are looking for a job. Pepper is nine, a gray tabby with hips that creak when she stands, and she wants something low and soft and warm. Moose is four, sixteen pounds of orange, and he wants to climb something and then knock the rest of it over. What they both wanted, as it turned out, was the front window.
About eight months ago I bought the Zakkart Cat Perch for Windowsill and hooked it onto the sill of the big sunny window in the living room. It has not come down since. I am not going to pretend a perch is a life-changing purchase. It is a piece of furniture that solves one small daily problem, and it solves it well enough that I would buy it again tomorrow. Here is the long version, ten reasons, in the order I would explain them to a friend.
The perch that has not come down in eight months
Hooks over a window sill, rated to hold up to 40 pounds, and the cushion goes in the washing machine. Measure your sill slot first.
Amazon See the perch on Amazon →It uses a window you already own instead of floor you do not have
The living room in this house is not big, and the floor is already spoken for by a sofa, two chairs, a cat tree in the corner and a scratching post at the end of the sofa. A perch adds climbing space without adding a footprint. Nothing sits on the carpet. Nothing has to be walked around or vacuumed under. It hangs over the sill and the room goes on underneath it. If your house is anything like mine, that is the whole argument right there.
It hooks onto the sill, so nothing has to hold by suction
Every suction cup hammock I have tried worked fine for about a month and then let go on a cool morning, which is a hard way to learn physics at six a.m. with a sixteen pound cat. This one hooks over the sill into a slot, and the listing asks for a slot at least half an inch deep. That is the one real condition. If your window is a flush vinyl slider with no lip to it, measure before you order, because the Zakkart perch cannot grip what is not there.
The bed is sewn onto the frame instead of zipped
The cushion attaches with a sewn sleeve that slips over the frame, not a zipper. I have thrown out two cat beds because the zip gave out at the corner where a heavy cat lands. Eight months in, this one has not pulled loose, and the attachment is the reason. It is a small construction detail and it is the first thing I would check on any perch I bought again.
It holds up to 40 pounds, which covers my biggest cat twice over
The perch is rated to hold up to 40 pounds. Moose is sixteen and lands like a dropped bag of flour. There is no sag and no creak when he jumps on, and the frame is hardwood and metal rather than molded plastic. The whole thing weighs under four pounds, so it is not fighting the window to stay put, and I have not had to re-tighten a single thing on it.
The bolsters give an older cat something to lean against
Pepper does not jump the way she used to. What she wants now is a soft place with a rim she can press her shoulder into, and the bolsters along the sides of this bed do that job. It is not an orthopedic anything and I would not claim it treats a thing. It is a cushion with a lip on it, and for a stiff nine year old cat that has turned out to be enough.
Eight months, two cats, one of them sixteen pounds, and the bed has not come off the frame once.
It puts a cat at nose height with the yard, which is the real entertainment
The front window looks at a maple, a driveway and the neighbor's fence, and that is better television than anything I could buy. Pepper watches for an hour at a time without moving. Moose chatters at the scrub jays. A cat with something to watch sleeps better and gets into less, and that has been true in this house since the perch went up.
The cushion comes off and goes in the washing machine
Cold wash, low tumble dry, then back on the frame. I do it every few weeks, and more often in spring when the pollen coats everything outside and half of it ends up indoors. The hair and dust come out of the fabric, the seams hold, and it goes back on without a fight. A cat bed you cannot wash is a cat bed that ends up in the garage.
The XL bed is 26.4 by 15 inches, which is room to actually stretch
There are two sizes, and I bought the XL: a 26.4 inch by 15 inch bed on a frame that measures 26 by 15 by 9 inches. Pepper can sprawl the full length with a paw hanging off the end, which is how she prefers to sleep. Moose fits fine. He just does not fit beside her, which brings me to the next one.
It goes up in a few minutes with nothing screwed into the trim
I am sixty-six and I did it myself off a step stool. No drill, no bracket, no holes in the window casing. It hooks on and settles. That matters if you rent, and it matters if you have already repainted that trim once and would rather not do it again. The Zakkart perch is the only piece of cat furniture in this house that did not come with an Allen key.
It gives two cats separate territory, which is worth more than it sounds
Moose has the tall cat tree in the corner and Pepper will not go above the lowest platform on it. The perch is hers through the sunny part of the afternoon and his once the light goes flat, and the handoffs have gotten quieter since it went up. One more place to be is one less reason to argue over the same square of window.
What I'd Skip
If I were setting up a window for cats from scratch, here is what I would leave on the shelf. Suction cup hammocks, for a big cat, in a house with temperature swings. Anything that requires drilling a bracket into a window frame, because the holes outlast the product by about a decade. And a second perch in a small room, which usually just becomes furniture the cats walk past on the way to the first one.
The condition that actually matters is the sill. This perch needs a slot at least half an inch deep to hook into, and a flush modern slider will not have one, so measure yours before you order and save yourself the return. It is also not a referee. If two cats genuinely dislike each other, a cushion in a window will not fix that. It is a good place to sit, and that is all it claims to be.
For a house with one good sunny window and a cat who stares at it, that is plenty. Eight months in, mine is still up, still full of cat, and still the first place Pepper goes when the sun comes around the corner of the house.
If your sill has a lip, this is the one I would buy again
A 26.4 by 15 inch bed, a sewn-in sleeve instead of a zip, no suction cups and no drilling. Check your slot depth, then order with confidence.
Amazon Check today's price on Amazon →