You decided to get yourself (and your cats) a cat tree. Yeah! Most of the time, cats will be all over this thing as soon as you get it in the door. Or if you are going to assemble it yourself, your cats will be all over the parts and the box.
But, some cats need some time to get acquainted with a new cat tree. What should y0u do if your cats aren’t jumping on this new thing right off the bat?
First of all, just be patient. Some times a cat just needs time to adjust to something new. I like to compare adding a cat tree to your home to adding any type of new furniture to your home. You might put it in it’s spot, and come back a few hours later and find that your cats are climbing on it, adjusting to it when they want to, not when you want them to.
If you want to encourage your cats to investigate their new tree, there’s a couple things you can do.
Using cat toys that they are familiar with to get them to climb on the new structure can help out quite a bit. This will show them that you want them to climb on the tree. Often they are used to us trying to keep them off of furniture, so they may not realize that this structure is just for them.
Another common technique is to coax them onto the new tree with catnip. This will help make the whole thing cat friendly right off the bat, and it will be obvious to your cats that you want them to be on the new tree if you sprinkle some catnip on it.
If your cats have a favorite viewing spot, such as a favorite window, it can also help to place the cat tree in front of the window. They will be able to get a better viewing vantage point of the areas they like to gaze at and watch over, so they will be encouraged to use the cat tree to do so.
Don’t worry if your cats aren’t all over the cat tree immediately. Mine weren’t when I first got one. But now I don’t think they could live without it.
