Haute CATure: Stylish Furniture for Cats

The Cat Cocoon, made from cardboards. Photo: Warren Lieu.

Love your cat but don’t want to sacrifice your décor by putting up those ghastly scratch post? What’s more important: your stylish pad or your pet’s happiness?

Well, now you don’t have to choose anymore. Chris Colin wrote a New York Times article about a new trend: stylish luxury furnitures for cats!

“The color, the texture, the shape, the scale — those things are just all wrong,” said Elizabeth Paige Smith, a Venice, Calif., furniture designer, speaking of the traditional feline options.

Cats love cat trees. Cat trees are ghastly. So it is a simple but profound — maybe even existential — dilemma that has dogged kitty lovers for ages: Happy pet or stylish pad?

Nine years ago, Ms. Smith made an effort to change things with her corrugated cardboard Kittypod (about $350; information: 310-392-8060 or kittypod.com). But in general, in an era when everything from cheese graters to soap dishes has gotten designy, cat furniture has been the forgotten basement rec room. As a result, thousands of beloved family members have gone without, and thousands more beloved homes have been marred by what Patrice Farameh, editor of the forthcoming coffee table book “Luxury for Cats,” calls “eyesores, pushed to the corner of the room.”

Link – Thanks Chris!