Window hammocks and perches for cats

A cat spends a considerable part of its day observing. Not sleeping: watching, from a high point, whatever moves outside. It is a species need, not a whim, and a window with nowhere to sit leaves it unsatisfied.

The sill is almost never enough. It is too narrow for a cat to lie full-length, often cluttered, and it gets hot in summer. A suction hammock solves all three at once: it fixes to the glass itself, it is forty to fifty centimetres wide, and it lets air pass underneath.

Two things decide whether it holds. The cleanliness of the glass when you fit it — a suction cup on greasy glass lets go overnight, with the cat on it. And height: a cat does not use a bed at floor level, it wants to look down. Eighty centimetres minimum.

There is an alternative for treated double glazing, where suction cups hold badly: a wall shelf fixed just below the window. Less elegant, but it does not fall.

See also our **Save the sofa** and **A corner of its own** aisles.