Design Tips and Ideas

Methodology and considerations for designing a catscape that works well for you, your home, and your cats!

Fast forward to Design IDEAS

A methodology and important considerations for designing a catscape that works well.

Fast forward to Design IDEAS

OUR METHOD

Cut one piece of painter's tape to each shelf-length in the Deluxe Kit.


If you have sufficient wall-area for additional kits, go ahead and prepare the tape for those as well.


For ease of keeping track, mark the length of each piece of tape towards its center. Also indicate whether the opening of the 26" shelves will be on the right or on the left.


Arrange the pieces of tape on your wall in a manner that flows well with existing furniture, artwork, windows, doorways, etc. Prioritize accessibility and movement of the cats, and consider overall aesthetics of the design as sculpture on your wall.


If your design requires different or additional lengths to be complete, add those to your order when purchasing the Kit/s.


Find the sweet spot

Above the back of a couch, you'll need to find the sweet spot between too low for your tallest friend or family member when seated and too high for the cats to access their catscape.

Cat Shelves, cat trees

OUR METHOD

Cut one piece of painter's tape to each shelf-length in the Deluxe Kit.


If you have sufficient wall-area for additional kits, go ahead and prepare the tape for those as well.


For ease of keeping track, mark the length of each piece of tape towards its center. Also indicate whether the opening of the 26" shelves will be on the right or on the left.


Arrange the pieces of tape on your wall in a manner that flows well with existing furniture, artwork, windows, doorways, etc. Prioritize accessibility and movement of the cats, and consider overall aesthetics of the design as sculpture on your wall.


If your design requires different or additional lengths to be complete, add those to your order when purchasing the Kit/s.


Find the sweet spot

Above the back of a couch, you'll need to find the sweet spot between too low for your tallest friend or family member when seated and too high for the cats to access their catscape.

Cat Shelves, cat trees

Mind the acute angles

The only limitation you will encounter is that two intersecting shelves cannot be less than 65° apart due to the thickness of the shelves. People are finding ways around this to achieve close to 45°, and we're still trying to figure out how to achieve this reliably.


The more acute the angle, the shallower slopes can be, but the less space there is for the cat on the lower shelf.

Set your cats up for success
Keep in mind that your cat may use the highest shelves as a place to evade being caught, so make sure you have a way of reaching them when you need to.

Know your cat's comfort level, and avoid putting shelves higher than they like to go.

Remove sharp and otherwise potentially harmful objects from surfaces and areas to which the cats might jump.
Cat Shelves, cat tree
Felines like fluid lines
Avoid slopes that are too steep and jumps that are too far.

Jumps are dramatic and entertaining for us, "purrrkour" for cats, but they inhibit the cat from flowing freely. CatScapes Cat Shelves are designed for speed and the fluid movement that is innate to cats rather than the all-too common smattering of precarious perches, hammocks, and wobbly, Indiana Jones-style bridges.
Cat Shelves, Cat Trees
Make your catscape accessible and a part of your home
Do not over-estimate the ability of the cat to gain speed and launch onto the shelves. Integrate the floor, the back of a couch, the top of a bookcase, and other pre-existing furniture to form a catscape that is inviting and easy for the cats to access and organic to the existing home environment.

A conventional cat tree can serve as a fabulous elevator!
Multiple paths
Especially if you have more than one cat, we recommend that you offer them more than one path up and down the catscape and from any given shelf so that the cats are never trapped or cornered by one another on the catscape.
Cat Shelves, cat trees
Breathing-room
Commonly sized cats can scoot through a fairly small space 9" down to even 7", but 12" between the ceiling and the top shelf is a more comfortable minimum, and 18" allows them to sit up straight and comfortably! Also keep in mind that cats do not jump forward like bullets. The trajectory of their jump forms an arc. Similarly, except when startled, they don't jump vertically like pieces of toast! They need room to jump forward when jumping up to or down from shelves.
Think Three-Dimensionally
The painters tape is only 2/3rds of the story.

When approaching corners, keep in mind that the shelf on the adjacent wall will come out ~10". You can tuck over and under the shelf on the adjacent wall to avoid gaps in those corners, but pay attention to how those shelves will intersect/overlap. This becomes even more critical when one or both of the shelves are positioned at an angle.

We "rehearse" the arrangement of shelves that will meet in the corner by holding boards in position to see how they will interact and feel prior to actual installation.
Cat Shelves, Cat Trees
We also encourage you to familiarize yourself with the more mechanical, technical information provided on the Installation page.