At 2:14 on a night in late April, a cat perch let go of our dining room window with a noise like a dropped cookie sheet. Caleb sat straight up in bed. Hank barked once, downstairs, for the first time in months. Mabel, thankfully, had abandoned that perch at bedtime and was asleep at the foot of our bed, where she lifted her head, looked at the two of us like we'd made the noise, and went back to sleep.
That was perch number one. It took three tries and about a month to find one she would actually use. Here's what she turned down, what she finally approved of, and what it took to make it work on a 77-year-old window.
Why she needed a new spot
All winter, Mabel sleeps on the radiator shelf Caleb built in 2023. By May the boiler shuts off for the season, the cast iron goes cold, and her favorite seat in the house becomes just a shelf. Every spring she drifts around looking for a replacement and ends up on the dining table, which is not where anyone wants a cat.
The dining room window seemed like the obvious answer. It's where she already spends her afternoons watching the bird feeder, it gets morning sun, and in May the birds are at their busiest: chickadees, goldfinches turning yellow, a pair of rose-breasted grosbeaks and one very bold squirrel.
What she turned down
Perch one: a suction-cup window hammock, $29. These stick to the glass with big suction cups, and they work well on smooth, modern windows. Our windows are the original double-hungs, and the old glass is slightly wavy. The cups held, sort of, for about three weeks, loosening a little more each time the glass went from cold at night to warm in the sun. Then, 2:14 a.m. After that, Mabel wouldn't go near it, even when Caleb stuck it back up. I don't blame her.
Perch two: a sill-mounted padded shelf, $34. This kind clamps onto the inside window sill and has a support bracket that rests against the wall below. It was solid, but the shelf was only about nine inches deep, and she's not a small-boned cat. She'd hop up, sit with her back half hanging off, look out for a minute and hop down. She used it as a step, never a bed. It went into the donation bag.
What finally worked
Perch three: a framed hammock that clamps to the sill, $45. It's a sturdy metal frame with a fabric sling stretched across it, about 22 inches wide and deep enough for a full curl. Like perch two, it clamps to the sill and has a leg that braces against the wall below, so there's nothing stuck to the glass.
Making it work on our old window took Caleb about twenty minutes and a few odds and ends from his workbench. He stuck felt pads under the clamp jaws so they wouldn't dent or scrape the old varnish on the sill, and laid a thin strip of rubber shelf liner under the frame so it wouldn't slide on the smooth wood. Our plaster wall bows slightly, so the support leg wasn't sitting flat; a small block of scrap wood behind it fixed that.
He tightened it down, pushed on it with his full forearm and declared it "not going anywhere." We set it up on a Sunday morning in early May. Mabel watched from a dining chair for most of the afternoon, then climbed in around four, turned twice and lay down in the sag of the sling with her chin on the frame. She stayed three hours.
She's been in it every day since, usually from mid-morning until the sun moves off the window. She chirps at the grosbeaks, sleeps through the chickadees and goes rigid every time the squirrel lands on the feeder pole.
What it all cost
Three perches, $108 total. I returned nothing (I waited too long on the first one), and the second one went to a thrift store. If I'd known what I know now, I'd have measured the sill depth, ignored anything with suction cups on old glass and gone straight to a framed sling with a wall brace. That would have saved $63 and one very loud night.
The hammock will come down in October when the radiators start ticking again, and she'll move back to her shelf without a backward glance.
Mabel's verdict: acceptable, pending the arrival of more grosbeaks.
