Best Cat Shelves: ContempoCat Wall Steps

My Pick: ContempoCat Wall Climbing Steps

Affordable Catification

Catification is when you transform your home into one that allows your cat to easily climb and explore, giving him space and respecting your own. These setups can be extremely expensive, with one decent cat shelf running $50-100 (and yes, per shelf).

For the average person, we want affordable catification that enriches our cat’s life but doesn’t endanger our bank account. This swayed me to make my own cat shelves, which worked great, and saved me some cash. But recently, I found there’s an even better and more affordable way. Enter ContempoCat wall climbing steps, where quality, appearance, and price are at equal levels of awesomeness.

Discovered on the ‘Gram

When I stumbled upon ContempoCat on Instagram, I instantly fell in love with their products. From modular trees to wall climbing steps, nothing actually looks like cat furniture – it all looks like decor, and the simple style would work with any room.

ContempoCat was looking for sponsors, so I messaged them directly for details. In exchange for posting about them on Insta, I would get a small discount on my purchase. I told them if I liked the steps, I’d blog about them too. So here we are!

I decided to purchase the following for the foster room:

• Four 30″ curvy shelves for $35/piece
• One pack of four 9.5″ round steps for $79

Pros:

• Custom options and packaging. Shelves arrived shrink wrapped together with hardware and instructions. Clearly they understand we all have different sized cats, rooms, and budgets, and they pack individually.
  • Large shelves are available in curvy or rectangular.
  • Smaller steps are available in round or square, with the option of a discounted 4-pack.
• Hardware included. Brackets, anchors, 2″ wall screws (attach bracket to wall), and 1″ smaller screws (fix shelf to bracket). You just need a Phillips head screwdriver, pencil, and level (and for me, a stud finder and a few extra screws which we’ll get in to below).
• Simple instructions. They recommend spacing the steps 8″, but most of mine are at least 9-10″ because my cats have very long bodies.

• High quality and no missing items, holes, etc. We’ve all been there – you’re putting something off and a hole is missing, or doesn’t line up correctly. Not the case here. Everything fit, holes were where they were supposed to be and things lined up perfectly.
• Big shelves are great for big cats. All of the curvy shelves are 30″ long, so even bigger cats can easily sprawl out and not fall off.
• Sturdy material, 100% birch wood.
• Modern and attractive. Small brackets for the win!
• Affordable and easy. My DIY shelves cost a little over $100 to make. The regular price for my ContempoCat steps came to $220, and all I had to do was hang them, and even mounting them was easier.
• I love them, but don’t take my word for it:

Beaker relaxes on a ContempoCat curvy shelf.

Although ContempoCat recommends 8″ between steps, I put about 10″ between because all three of my resident cats are long (Beaker pictured).

Beaker has no problem climbing the steps.

Cons:

• Instructions lack many visuals. There are not a lot of diagrams. If you are a more visual person, it will take you a little longer to understand the mounting steps.
• Need shorter screws for studs. Given the size of the shelves (and ContempoCat’s recommendation), one bracket per shelf should be mounted into a wall stud. Because of the bracket’s size, you have to manually screw them into the wall (power drill won’t work – it’s too big). I couldn’t get the 2″ screws that were provided into the studs all the way, so I had to find shorter screws to use with the studs.

Really not deal breakers, and the pros far outweigh the cons.

Overall, Happy Customers, Right Dolly?

Visit ContempoCat to check out their product line.

Disclaimer: I am a sponsor, but not a paid sponsor, for ContempoCat. In exchange for trying their product, I received a small discount on the shelves. My decision to write a review is based on the quality of the product (I’m extremely happy). The opinions above are mine and I’m not receiving any sort of compensation to write this review.

Need another cool piece of cat furniture that doesn’t look like furniture? Check out my review of my fave tree and scratcher from Sauder.