Are Rustic Cat Trees Best?

The scuttlebutt these days is that rustic cat trees are better than
other kinds of cat furniture. Let's face it, it's an exciting thought
to give our indoor kitties the same wild thrills as their outdoor
cousins, but without all the risks. Is this true? Let's take a look
and find out.It's been said that if you build a cat furniture from
carpet covered wood you will only teach your kitty to scratch on your
furnishings and rugs. So you should build rustic cat trees
instead.From my own personal experience and that of many of my cat
loving friends I know this to be totally FALSE. All of my cats over
the years have learned at a very early age that there are things it's
OK to scratch on and there are things it's NOT OK to scratch
on.Liberal use of catnip (whole leaf or oil) on the object you wish
your kitty to use will keep them scratching on the right thing and
away from your furnishings.Another thing we often hear is that rustic
cat trees are easier to make. The truth is building rustic cat
furniture of any kind is more difficult than building the more
traditional kind because you are dealing with wood in it's natural
state. It must be cut, dried, debugged etc before you can even begin
building your cat tree.And don't forget because tree branches don't
come in standard sizes it'll take a lot more fiddling to get things to
work out just so.Rustic cat trees are just plain cheaper to make. This
depends a great deal on you. If you harvest and prepare your own wood
and don't need a class in how to use it, then yes, it will be less
expensive to make a rustic cat tree than a more conventional one.
Heck, it could even be free. However, if you don't have access to or
the ability to collect and treat your own wood... it can become a very
pricey project.Classes like the ones offered by
NaturalTreeFurniture.com run about $300 a day. To purchase a finished
rustic cat scratching log from them will run you between $200 and
$300. An actual tree runs around $1,800 and up. That's a lot more than
most traditional cat trees cost.