The Day We Set Up the Zakkart Windowsill Cat Perch

The Zakkart box sat in the mudroom for two days before I opened it. Not because I was busy. Because I wanted to measure the dining room window slot one more time before I trusted a perch that hangs off a sill with no screws in it.

That window is the best seat in the house. It looks out on the bird feeder in the side yard, and Biscuit, our nine year old orange tabby, has claimed that sill for years. He is around fourteen pounds now and he does not get up in one motion anymore. He would put his front paws on the sill, think it over, and settle for the floor instead. I wanted to give him the view back without putting holes in a hundred year old window frame. Ray and I have been working through this farmhouse a room at a time for years, and I know exactly how much I hate patching old wood.

The Zakkart perch is a hardwood frame with a removable cushion and low bolsters, and it works on a different idea than most of what I looked at. No suction cups. No drilling. It hooks into the slot along the sill, the shallow channel a lot of old windows have, and the listing is explicit that the window needs a slot at least half an inch deep for the hook to catch. I measured ours with a tape before I ordered. A hair over five eighths. That one measurement is the whole ballgame with this perch, and I would not order it without taking it first.

The size L is 24 inches long and 15 inches wide, 9 inches tall with the bolsters, and it weighs about three and a half pounds. The listing says it holds up to 40 pounds. Biscuit is 14. That leaves room, which matters, because June is three years old at eight pounds and does not believe any flat surface is exclusively someone else's.

Ray carried it in from the mudroom. He is the one who does the drilling in this house, though there was none to do here. I held the level against the frame, he set the hook into the slot, and it seated with a small solid click. That was the entire installation.

I have put together enough cat furniture to be suspicious of anything that goes that fast. So I pressed down on the front edge with the flat of my hand, hard, the way a fourteen pound cat lands. Nothing moved. The hook was doing what the listing said it would do.

The listing says 40 pounds. Biscuit is 14. What I actually watched was the sill, and the sill did not move.

Biscuit found it before I finished putting the level away. He stepped up from the dining chair, turned around twice, and lay down flat with his chin on the bolster. He stayed an hour and a half. When he got down the frame had not shifted and the cushion had not slid forward. He has never been a dramatic jumper, so watching him walk onto a perch instead of hoisting himself up was the part I noticed.

June uses it differently. She gets up in a crouch and watches the feeder with her tail going, and she braces her back feet against the bolsters, which is what they are for. When Biscuit is on the perch she is not. That is the only negotiation those two have ever settled, and I will take it.

Two things worth knowing before you order. The slot requirement is real, and wanting it does not change a window that has none. The windows in our newer back addition are flat with no channel, so this perch does not fit them at all. Second, the cushion comes off and the cover washes, I have had it through the machine twice on cold, but it takes most of a day to air dry, so the perch sits bare for an afternoon. The frame wipes clean with a damp cloth.

The build has held up. The Zakkart frame is hardwood with metal hooks, the bed comes off for washing, and there is nothing on it that can break. June has stood on the bolsters, which I did not care for, and they did not give. As of November it is in the same window, on the same sill, with no marks on the frame that I can find.

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

Take the tape to the window before you order anything, and be honest about the number. If there is no slot in your sill, this is not the perch for you, and there is no version of that story that ends well. If there is one, look at the width of the window as well as the depth of the slot, because 24 inches of perch takes up most of a narrow frame.

Then look at your cat. Biscuit is a large, careful animal who wanted a flat place to lie down and watch birds, and the Zakkart perch gives him exactly that. June would rather be up high on the wall shelves in the den, and she treats the window as a waiting room. A perch on a sill is not a climbing route and it is not a substitute for one. It is one good seat, and if your cat is the kind that wants to lie in the sun for two hours, that is enough. Our two took to it in a day. Yours may take a week, or may walk past it, and no perch I have bought has ever come with a guarantee about a cat.