Sufficing the need of a tree dweller means you want to create one or more places for your tree dwelling cat in your house that will make them ultra happy. Tree dwellers love places on different vertical levels and ultimately need a cat super highway.
What Defines A Tree Dweller?
Among the many types of cat personalities, there are two main types:
- Tree Dwellers
- Bush Dwellers
Kira on my Shoulders
Tree Dwellers
Tree dwellers generally do not like to sit at low down places. They rather peer over the area from a higher location, getting the best overview over what is going on down below.
Bush Dwellers
Bush dwellers like low-down places to hide in and peer from. Hunters do also dwell in bushes to target their prey. Bush dwelling behaviour can therefore still be seen in a tree dweller too as hunting is part of their instincts.
Is My Cat A Tree Dweller?
If your cat is often up on shelves, high up in your cat tree, on top of cupboards and tries to get higher up whenever they are sitting on your shoulder (for example trying to get on top of the door), you got yourself definitely a tree dweller.
Or do you? There are of course the exceptions where tree dwellers also show bush dwelling behaviour or behave in both directions a bit. You will have to figure out whether your cat is behaving more towards either form to determine their official ranking in dwelling behaviour.
What Do Tree Dwellers Prefer
Tree dwellers need way more vertical space and that can sometimes be a challenge to implement. Vertical space, means that you need things on the walls. Not everybody has room for more things on the walls, because of an already crowded wall space with cupboards and paintings.
Here it comes down to priority, how much priority you want to give your dear cats in your house. Will they share your house evenly, you might need to do away with some paintings and make place for some cat beds on the wall. We did anyhow and we live in a not too big house.
The advantage however, is when you already got shelves and cupboards and other furniture installed with a relatively high height. Cats love to climb these places and they can easily be utilized by installing some cat beds on top of them.
Adding some cat bed structures such as the Curve Wall Mounted Cat PerchCurve Wall Mounted Cat Perch and the Kerbl Dolomit Wall-Mounted Board mounted on your walls, will help in creating that cat high way. A cat high way is a horizontal path they can walk on through your house on different vertical levels. You can make the bridge between two cat beds or cupboards by placing a cat tree or adding shelves slightly diagonal or on different levels on the wall.
Or you can keep it very minimal and just have a cupboard/shelf and a cat tree.
We got a big cupboard with glass windows in our living room that has plenty of walking and sleeping place on top. There used to be electrical lights here, but we have disabled them so that the cats can make use of the room instead. On the right side of the cupboard we placed a strong build new cat tree of proper wood planks and nice soft beds.
At the left side of the cupboard we mounted several cat beds at different levels on the wall. Currently the cat super high way is only on one wall, but we hope to extend this in the coming years including a way to get to the hall from up there (probably by removing that old door there in the middle).
There is even a cat bed with a hammock mounted on the wall behind the cat tree, but this one is less popular than the other cat beds and other cat hammock.
You can just see a glimpse of one of the water fountains we have installed for our cats on the bottom left of the cupboard, as well as the cat tunnel beneath the cupboard. Also, on top of the cupboard we put one cat bed down for them to sleep in.
As you can see from above picture, there are times these beds are immensely popular, can you spot them all? They possibly enjoy it so much on this picture because of the heater/airco that is mounted on the right-wall there blowing nice warm air.
Other Places To Find A Tree Dweller
Tree dwellers are constantly trying to find an even better high up place to explore. Nusse is actually a bush dweller, but seems to copy the tree dwelling behaviour from other tree dwelling cats among us. When she was on my shoulder last time, she decided she could jump the top of the door.
Nusse also climbed the top of the kitchen cupboards here, simply by jumping first on the oven, from there on the fridge and from the fridge she got up on the top of the kitchen cupboards. Why? She had been following a fly that was on the wall there and wanted to catch it.
Kira is worse, she actually climbed along the door to the top of the door here. She also managed once upon a time to climb the door and then she jumped the wooden ceiling we had (another house). UPSIDE DOWN! Can you imagine? She didn’t keep that going for very long, but landed nicely on four paws again.
Kira is also a master in opening doors, both indoors and outside. There have been times she left the door open for others to go in/out.
Tiger and Kira both love to climb trees outside and one time 2 years back we found Kira on top of the garage roof trying to catch bats.
What are your experiences with tree dwellers? Is your cat a tree dweller? Share your thoughts below!