The Day We Set Up the FUKUMARU Cat Wall Shelves

The box leaned against the hall wall for nine days before we opened it. I had read the instruction sheet twice. Ray had read it zero times, which is how most of our projects start and how most of them end up fine anyway.

June is the reason it came into the house at all. She is our gray and white cat, three years old, about eight pounds, adopted from the county shelter as a kitten. She goes up anything tall. The back of the sofa. The bookshelf in the front room. The top of the refrigerator, which I pretend not to know about. What she did not have was a piece of the house that was hers and also up high.

So in April I ordered the FUKUMARU Cat Wall Shelves, the 4 in 1 set. The listing describes it as a bridge, a wall bed, a scratching post and a shelf, four pieces that mount to a wall and arrange into one run. That was the appeal for me. Not a single perch stuck in a corner, but a route she could walk.

The shipping label said a little over fifteen pounds. Inside the box were the four pieces, the brackets and mounting hardware, and the instruction manual. The listing gives the materials as engineered wood, jute and polyester. The jute is on the scratching post section, and that is the part June has put the most wear on in the months since.

We picked the long drywall wall in the den, in the back addition. The front rooms of this old house are plaster over lath, and I do not hang anything heavy on plaster if I can help it. The den wall is ordinary drywall with studs on sixteen inch centers, which is what the listing says the set is designed for. Ray drilled. I held the level and told him when it was off, which it was, twice.

The whole set went up on a Sunday morning with a drill, a level and a pencil. June was on the bridge before Ray had the drill back in its case.

The mounting is not complicated, but it is not a ten minute job either. Each piece gets its own bracket, and each bracket needs to land on wood. We ran a stud finder down the wall, marked the stud lines in pencil, and worked left to right so the bridge lined up with the bed. Where a hole fell between studs, Ray used a proper toggle anchor instead of the small plastic sleeves in the box. That was our call, not something the listing asks for. The set carries a one year warranty on the hardware and I would just as soon not need it.

The way we arranged it, the set takes up about two and a half feet across and a little over three feet of wall height. It sits high enough that June can look down over the room, and low enough that I can reach her without dragging out a step stool. That second part matters more every year, honestly.

By that afternoon she had claimed the whole run. She walked the bridge end to end, sat on the shelf section and watched the bird feeder through the window, then folded herself into the wall bed and slept there most of the afternoon. She uses the scratching post part every single day, and the jute is already scuffed where her front claws hit it. That is what jute is for. I would rather it looked used than looked new.

Biscuit does not use it. He is nine, about fourteen pounds, an orange tabby who has started taking the stairs a little slower this year, and the listing names small and medium cats. He is not the cat for this set and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What he wants is a wide flat surface at knee height and no climbing involved, which is exactly what he has. The wall shelves are on a different wall from the tall cat tree in the den, so there is no jump route between them, and that was deliberate on our part.

If we were hanging it again, I would put the bed piece where the cat can see the doorway rather than the window. June likes the window, but she likes knowing who is coming up the hall more. I would also measure twice for the lowest bracket, because that one sets the height of everything above it and there is no adjusting after the holes are drilled.

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

I would tell you this is a wall project, not a purchase. The FUKUMARU set is well made and the pieces went together square, but the result depends on where you put the screws. If you cannot find studs, or if your walls are plaster, get somebody who does that kind of work to look before you drill. We waited until we were sure and I am glad we did. I would also tell you to read the sheet out loud to whoever is holding the drill, because mine did not read it and I still had to say the same three things twice.

And I would tell you not to buy it expecting a different cat. This did not make June a calmer animal or a better behaved one. She was a climber before the box arrived and she is a climber now. All the shelves did was give her somewhere to do it that was not the kitchen counter. If your cat is a lap cat, this will not convert them, and that is not a flaw in the product. One more thing, and I mean this plainly: I am a science teacher, not a vet. If you are worried about your cat's weight or their joints or how they are moving, ask your own vet before you decide a shelf is the answer.