The Day We Set Up the Aechonow Cat Stairs

The bed in our upstairs room sits higher off the floor than it has any business being. It came with the farmhouse and Ray and I have never found a good reason to replace it. Biscuit is nine now, an orange tabby of about fourteen pounds who has spent most of those years arranging himself on soft horizontal surfaces. In July he started stopping at the foot of the bed. He would put his front paws up on the rail, hold there a second, think it over, and then turn around and lie down on the rug.

That was new. He had always just gone up.

At his checkup in August our vet said he was a little stiff for his age, nothing diagnosed, and that making the climb easier was a reasonable thing to do. I am not a vet. I teach eighth grade science. But I can follow a suggestion and I can read a listing all the way through, including the part with the dimensions, which is the part most people skip.

So in August I ordered the Aechonow 3-in-1 pet stairs. It is three steps with a cat cave built in at the bottom and scratching posts on the sides. The listing gives the whole thing as 19.3 inches long, 11.8 inches wide and 18.9 inches tall, about eleven pounds, sitting on a base plate 19.2 by 11.8 inches. Eleven pounds is a one person job, which mattered, because Ray was out at the barn.

It came in a box with the instruction manual and not much else, which I have come to prefer. No bag of loose hardware rolling around on the kitchen table. I had it standing upright in the old part of the house in under twenty minutes, and most of that was me reading the sheet twice before starting, which is my habit and one of Ray's complaints.

Ray came in from the barn, looked at it, and asked whether the cat had approved it yet. Fair question. That is usually the order things go in around here.

He walks up the three steps to the cedar chest lid and steps from there onto the quilt. He has done it every night since.

The stairs went against the cedar chest at the foot of our bed, on the wood floor, which is what the listing means by floor mount. I did not want them floating in the middle of the room and I did not want Biscuit to have to cross a gap to get where he was going. As it sits, he walks up the three steps to the chest lid and steps from the chest onto the quilt. There is no jump in the middle of it. The base plate is wide enough that the Aechonow set has not shifted once in three months, and I check, because I am the one who levels things in this house.

He uses it every night. The first night he went up two steps, stopped, and looked back at me over his shoulder. Then he kept going. Not gracefully and not on command, but the hesitation at the foot of the bed is gone. He goes up the steps, crosses the lid, and settles at the end of the quilt where he has always slept. I want to be careful here. I am not saying the stairs fixed anything. Our vet said easier is reasonable, we made it easier, and the cat took the easier route. That is the whole of the claim.

June is three, eight pounds, gray and white, and she has no opinion about the steps as steps. She does care about the cave, which the listing gives as 12.9 by 10.8 inches, and she sleeps in it most afternoons. She also uses the scratching posts, which the listing puts at six to seven inches high. That height is the reason the whole thing works for an older cat, and it is also the reason a young cat can stand up and get a good pull out of it.

What I would change is small. The posts on ours show wear on the front face already, which is normal and which I expected. At about nineteen inches long and twelve wide, the stairs take a real footprint, and ours sit directly in the path I walk at night. I have stubbed my toe on the bottom step twice. That is not the product's fault. That is my bedroom. The listing also carries a two year manufacturer warranty, which I have not had to use.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to measure the height you are actually asking your cat to cover, and then count how many steps you need to break it into. Our bed is tall, but the cedar chest gave us a landing, so three steps did it. If your bed is taller, or there is nothing at the foot of it, three steps might leave a last hop that is still too big, and a bench or something taller would serve you better. I would tell you to ask your own vet before you decide a slow climb is just age, because that is a conversation I am not qualified to have. And I would tell you that a set of stairs is not a fix. It is a way up for a decision your cat has already made. Biscuit wanted to be on the bed. He just did not want to jump to get there. The Aechonow stairs gave him the way up, and the rest was his.