Zakkart Window Perch Review: A Sunny Spot for Two Cats

The sunniest spot in my house is a three foot stretch of living room floor under the front window, and for years my older cat and I negotiated over it badly. She wanted the warmth. I wanted to cross the room without stepping over a gray tabby. I tried folding a bath towel onto the sill. I tried nudging the sofa closer to the glass. Neither lasted a week. What finally settled it was a Zakkart window perch, the XL size, hooked over that sill about eight months ago. It has not come down since.

I am sixty six, retired, and I have spent a good share of my life remodeling this 1970s ranch house one room at a time, so I notice how things are built. Hinges. Screws. Whether a drawer front lines up. A cat perch is a small purchase, but it sits in the room I use most, and it holds an animal that weighs more than a bowling ball. So I paid attention. Here is what eight months in a real house with two real cats has taught me.

How I've Used It

The perch went on the sill of the big front window in the living room, which faces the street and takes sun from mid morning until late afternoon. Mounting it took about as long as reading the directions, and the directions are short because there is very little to do. The frame hooks over the sill into the slot in the sill. Nothing is screwed into the trim and nothing sticks to the glass. I keep a screwdriver and an Allen key in the kitchen drawer for the small jobs around here, and I did not need either one.

A word about the sill, because that is the entire installation. Mine is a wooden sill with a channel the old storm window slides into. I measured it with a tape before I ordered, mostly because I have been burned before by furniture that assumes a standard this 1970s ranch does not have. It came out a little over half an inch deep, which is past the minimum the listing asks for. If yours measures right at the line, I would measure in three places, because sills are not always even from one end to the other.

Pepper is nine, about eleven pounds, and stiff in the hips. She is the reason I bought it. She had been sleeping on the back of the sofa because it was the highest warm spot she could reach without a real jump, and a sofa back is not a good place for an older cat to land. The perch sits at sill height, so she steps up from the floor with one easy hop and settles in. She spends most sunny afternoons up there now. From the kitchen table I can see one ear over the bolster, and that is how I know what time it is.

Moose is four, sixteen pounds, and built like a small ham. He climbs the cat tree in the corner every day and he does not accept being left out of anything. He fits on the perch. He does not fit on it comfortably next to his sister. So he takes it in the late afternoon, after she has moved to her bed in the bedroom, and there is usually a stretch of standing on the floor looking up at her first. That is a cat problem and not a perch problem, but it is worth saying plainly. This is one cat's spot. Two cats will share it only if they like each other more than mine do.

The Hook Is the Whole Idea

Most window perches hang from suction cups, and I have never had a suction cup hold in this house. The windows are old, the glass is never perfectly clean, and the temperature here swings from the nineties in July to single digits in January. A cup that holds in June can let go in February. The Zakkart perch does not use cups. It hooks over the sill into a slot cut in the sill, and that slot has to be at least half an inch deep. The weight of the cat presses the frame down and back into that channel. Physics does the work instead of rubber.

The frame is hardwood and metal, and you can feel the difference when you lift it. It is not bent wire with a cloth sling thrown over it. The bed sits in a sewn-in sleeve that runs along the frame, so there is nothing to zip and nothing to re thread after a wash. I have owned enough inexpensive cat furniture to know where it fails. It is always the joint, the fastener, or the zip. Here the fabric is held by the frame itself, and eight months of a sixteen pound cat landing on it has not loosened it.

The frame measures 26 by 15 by 9 inches and the sleeping area is 26.4 by 15. That makes for a long narrow bed, closer to a window box than a round basket. For a cat who likes to stretch out in a sunbeam, that shape is right. For a cat who curls into a ball, it still works, because the bolsters along the sides give her back something to press against. Pepper sleeps stretched the full length. Moose sleeps jammed into one end with his chin over the bolster.

Two Cats, One Perch

The perch is rated to hold up to forty pounds, and I believe it, mostly because of where the weight goes. The load lands in the sill channel, not on a bracket or a screw. Moose at sixteen pounds hits that platform with the confidence of an animal who has never once considered consequences, and the frame does not flex or shift. After the first week I went over the sill and the trim with my hand, half expecting to find a mark. There is nothing. No holes, no scuff, no lifted paint.

We are coming up on a full year with it, so it has seen both extremes. In July that window gets hot enough that I wondered about the frame, and in January the glass is cold enough that I expected the whole thing to shift a quarter inch. Neither happened. What did happen is that the perch became a winter spot as much as a summer one. Pepper moves to it around eleven, once the sun clears the roofline across the street, and she stays until it slides off the sill at three.

What I did not expect was how much it changed the window. The front window used to be a place where the cats sat on the floor and looked up at birds. Now it is a place where they are at bird height, and the whole window is in use. Pepper watches the street, the mail carrier, and a pair of house finches that nest in the spruce across the road. She is more alert in the afternoon than she was a year ago. A cat with a view has something to do.

It also gave me back the sofa. I had a folded blanket over the back cushion for her and it was forever sliding onto the floor. That blanket is in the closet now, and the living room looks less like a cat room and more like a room where a cat happens to live.

Washing It, and How It Looks in the Room

The cushion comes out. Cold wash, low tumble dry, then back into the sleeve. I have done it twice, once after a hairball and once before the grandkids came for a weekend. It came out of the dryer the same shape it went in. No clumping in the filling and no shrink at the seams. If you have ever pulled a wadded lump out of a dryer after washing a cheap pet bed, you know why I am mentioning it.

One note on the sleeve. Because the fabric runs the full length of the frame, the cushion has to go in flat and even. I set it on the frame, line up the middle, and work outward from there. If you stuff one end in first and chase it along, you will get a corner folded under and you will be starting over.

The frame wipes down with a damp cloth. Hair collects in the corners of the sleeve, and the vacuum attachment gets most of it between washes.

As for how it looks, this is cat furniture that lives in a window, and windows are visible from the street. It reads as a piece of wood with a bed in it rather than a plastic basket. My neighbor asked where I got it and she does not have cats. She thought it was a plant shelf.

The Things That Annoy Me

The slot requirement is the big one, and it is why I would tell anyone to go look at their own window before ordering. My front window has a sill with a channel a little over half an inch deep. My bedroom window does not. I wanted a second perch for the bedroom and it will not work there without changing the sill, which I am not going to do. So this perch lives in one window in this house. The listing is honest about the requirement, but it is easy to skim past when you are looking at pictures of cats in the sun.

The second annoyance is small. The cushion is snug in the sleeve, which is what you want, but it means working it back in after a wash. The first time I did it I got it in crooked and had to start over. It takes about a minute once you know the trick.

One more, and this applies to any window perch, not just this one. The window has to be a window you are willing to give up. Ours is the one I used to raise on cool mornings in September. Now it stays closed more often than not, because a cat is asleep in it. I have made my peace with that. You should know it going in.

The last thing is not the perch's fault at all. If you have two cats who both want the window, one perch will not settle that. I bought the Zakkart in the XL size thinking they would share it. They do not. Knowing what I know now, I would think about two perches in two windows, or one perch plus a cat tree near the glass, rather than one big perch and a standing negotiation.

Sixteen pounds lands on that platform most afternoons. Eight months on, the frame has not bowed, the sleeve has not loosened, and there is not a single screw hole in my window trim.

Who This Is For

If you have a cat who wants to be up near a window and you do not want holes in your woodwork, this is the piece. It suits an older cat especially, because the height is the sill and not the ceiling. One easy hop. Pepper is nine and stiff in the hips and she gets up there without a second thought.

It also suits a renter, or anyone in a house they do not plan to change. Nothing goes into the wall, the trim, or the glass. There is nothing to plug in, nothing to recharge, and nothing to adjust. It went up once and I have not touched it since except to pull the bed for a wash.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if your windows do not have a sill slot at least half an inch deep. Go and look first. Take a ruler with you. Without that channel there is nothing for the frame to hook onto, and no amount of clever arranging will fix it.

Skip it if you are hoping two cats will share. Mine do not. Skip it if you want something you can move from room to room, because it is cut for a particular sill and it wants to stay there. And skip it if yours is a very large cat who likes to sprawl, because the bed is long and narrow by design and a big cat fills it end to end.