Cats are notoriously hard to please and none-so more than my Theo. One day he won't touch his dry food and the next I'm having to wrangle it away from him because he ate a daily allowance in two minutes. So trying to find a cat basket on Amazon was like trying to decipher the Enigma Code.
That's until the Amazon Basics cat condo tree tower caught my eye. Two things appealed to me: the low price and how incredibly cute the little cat in the image looks. Theo, being much cuter, would reach some form of adorable nirvana sitting in the little hammock. I just needed to get it for him.
I went with the beige colour, because you can take the man out of Essex but not the Essex out of the man. This was £25.59 when I bought it but the price has increased to £40.80 since then. However, the one marked grey (but looks black in all the review pics...) is £21.14. I'd probably have gone with that one if it was available at the time.
The product also boasts are 4.7 rating out of 46,828 reviewers, with people praising its sturdiness, stability and ease of assembly. The latter point I cannot give you a fair review of as I invited my hyper-competent friend round and left the unassembled bits in front of her. It took her about 30 seconds after noticing said bits before she did it all for me. However, she didn't struggle.
Once up it now came down to getting the cat in the thing. Theo loves using the carpets in our bedrooms and my flatmates actual bed as his scratching post, so we needed to tempt him over. Also, he will often pick the least comfortable spot in the living room to sit rather than all the beds and sofas open to him.
However, with a sprinkling of cat nip (I actually got this from Amazon too - it says extra strong but feels normal strength, he loves it though and made it into a tea for him once that he dipped his entire face into) he jumped in, rubbed his face in and... laid down. Fully in. His big boy cat bum smoothing into the gap. Within a couple of days the spot became his favourite, where he could jump in and do his 12-year-old cat daily activity of staring at me and then trying to snatch all of my food out of my hands whenever I eat.
The two scratching posts made me feel a bit sceptical. He's not a Maine Coon by any standards but he could take most cats in a fight, so they seemed a bit on the small size. Have they stopped him from using the carpets and bed as a scratching post? No. He's a cat, thus he knows exactly what annoys me and does it anyway. But does he use it? Yes. So mission mostly successful.
He has gone off it as the weather's got warmer as the material stores a bit of heat, but this also means its perfect in the colder months. My main issue is that when he's in that basket, he gets The Devil In Him quicker, which is what I call the demonic state he enters where he grabs my hand with his paws to put into his mouth, where he proceeds to chomp.
It will fit into the aesthetic of most homes with cats and if you can't afford the massive trees, this is a good alternative. Our kitty has lots of vertical space to jump around the flat so this is a good compromise. Both Theo and I would heartily recommend this.
You can get the Amazon Basics Cat Condo Tree Tower in beige for £40.80 and in "grey" for £21.14.
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