Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I want to start off by saying that I was up in the air between buying this cat tower and another, smaller tower for $89 for my singular cat. After seeing the other product in person as compared to this tower, the quality and size difference was immense. I was more than impressed with my purchase and so much more satisfied after comparing what I considered to be the closest competition in person. This is a piece of furniture that will be in your home for years judging by the excellent build quality, and I want to tell anyone reading this review that if you are having a toss up on what towers to get, spend the money on this one and you will be more than satisfied. It was the pricier option for me when I was looking around, but one of the best investments I've made. The tower arrived promptly and in much smaller packaging than you would anticipate. It was flat packed in a nice and compact manner and was easy to move from my mail room to my apartment. There is some weight to it, but nothing that would require any help for the vast majority of people. Its maybe around 40 pounds in its entirety. All of the pieces and tools needed were there in the package. The only issue I had was one of the two bells did not jingle when it arrived, it seemed to be missing the rattling piece, but that was very minor to me and is an easy fix. It seemed to have been made that way and not an issue with shipping or transport. When taking apart the packaging, I recommend sorting the pieces as listed inside the construction manual beside you. It will make the building process much easier to follow. You will have to build the tower itself, but all of the required parts and an Allen Wrench should be included to put it together. The instructions are mostly picture and letter based showing you where to connect what piece, and are very simple to follow. I will tell anyone putting the tower together to make sure you have the right sized poles in the right places between each step. Some are similar in length and are easy to mistakenly put on. This process will most likely take you between 1.5 - 2 hours putting together the tower if you take your time and secure everything properly. Doing this right the first time is important, it determines the stability of your tower. I keep my screws fairly snug. It's not very difficult to complete, but definitely does take some time and effort to construct, don't anticipate building this tower in 20 minutes. The time spent will be well worth it though. The construction of the tower itself is excellent. The posts are wrapped very tightly with a thin sisal rope/twine and secured with many staples so it won't come free. My cat doesn't ever scratch sisal posts for some reason, he's strange, but I knew this coming in to this purchase. I think this rope would hold up very well over time to frequent use, I just can't say from very much personal experience. The fabric is nice and plush for a cat's standards as well. My cat is about 13lbs at the time of writing this review, and I have had the tower for several months. The two cubbies that your cat can hide in fit my little buddy perfectly with plenty of room to shuffle around inside. It gets nice and cozy when he lays inside for a while. It could easily support a 2nd cat in the same cubby/condo. The walls of the cubbies are fabric supported by insert poles but still fairly thick. The circular pouches/baskets on the end are nice, my cat rotates between the two. The higher one is his preference, as the lower one tends to sag a bit from his body weight due to less support, but it is nothing major. His favorite spots, however, are the two top perches on the tower. The bases have an incredibly soft and plush padding in the bottom for your cat to lay on, and a thick padded lining around the edge that my cat absolutely loves. He sits there more frequently than anywhere else, and the added support on the lower perch makes it incredibly solid. The hammock on the bottom sees almost no use by my cat, but that may be due to its placement near a wall in my smaller apartment. Toys often end up there in his place. The hole in the platform sees some use when my cat is playing or chasing around his toys. The tower itself is surprisingly stable alone. My cat leaps from the floor to the lower perch and back consistently and I never see it rock or sway. There is a strap that comes connected to the tower for mounting/anchoring it to the wall, presumably to keep it stable for heavier cats. I haven't needed to use that with my 13lbs cat, and see little give in the tower at all after months of constant use. Very sturdy and stable design that I can easily see accommodating larger cats with the wall anchor if stability ever became a concern. It has yet to be one for me. I cannot recommend this tower highly enough. It was a splurge purchase for me because I wanted something nice for my cat that would last a while, and this exceeded every expectation I had. It's one of my favorite purchases since living on my own, and I can see how much my little buddy appreciates it every day. I have attached some pictures of the tower in its completed form to my review. My cat is normally much more photogenic, but the one time I'm motivated to take some pictures of him and write a review, he looks like hes having war flashbacks in all of them. If you can excuse his face, hes mostly there to show proportions relevant to other people's cats. Excuse the catnip on the tower as well, I dust areas he doesn't use as frequently to entice him around the tower. I'd reccomend that to anyone who has a cat that's slightly wary of it or doesn't seem too fond of it at first, some cats are weirded out by new things! A little dusting of catnip on your tower when you first complete it will help your cat get more comfortable with it and be more apt to explore all of their little areas on the tower. It'll also make them want to come around it more! This is also my first review ever on Amazon, and I hope some of my insight could be helpful. This was a purchase I was so excited and happy about and lived up to my every expectation and then some. I was so satisfied that it finally motivated me to review some of these products I've purchased! Anyone on the fence about what tower to get, this is the tower you should get!