Would You Spend $899 for a Kitty Scratcher?

Vegetable-dyed scratch pads and organic catnip leaf? The money grows on these cat trees.

Early on in the pandemic, Mi-Anne Chan grew tired of staring at the beige cat tree in her two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. She had been tackling D.I.Y. projects during lockdown, so, inspired by the designs of the company Cat Haus, an idea was born. Ms. Chan, 26, allocated a budget of $150 toward upgrading her cat Bootsy’s home. Over the summer, she spent about six days filming the process of stripping and replacing the carpet scraps. She consulted Marci Koski, a cat behaviorist, and learned that Bootsy prefers sisal rope as a scratching post. (A disco ball was also installed to satisfy Bootsy’s lust for shiny objects.) “The goal was to not have it be so hideous,” said Ms. Chan. “In a small apartment, a cat tree takes up so much real estate so you need to have something cute.”