I mentioned that I'd ordered one on the anecdotes NG, but I tend to restrict
posts in this NG to health, behavior, and flaming =P

After four years of blissful ignorance, Oscar has discovered countertops.  I
bought pet grass and ordered a cat tree in order to distract her.  After all,
she's not really allowed on anything tall, so maybe a cat tree would allow her
to flex her wings in "legal" ways.

After much deliberation, I got the watchtower from Drs. Foster & Smith:

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=3129

You're supposed to let them approach it in their own good time, but I'm way
too impatient.  The same night we assembled it, she was already scratching on
the sisal posts, but I felt that she didn't realize she was allowed *on* the
thing, so I picked her up and put her on the lowest level.  That was fine with
her.  Through a combination of luring with toys and actual lifting, we got her
to at least sit on each level.

Unfortunately, I had to remove the toys you hang from the platforms.  Oscar
has this thing about eating string, and rather than paying any attention to
the mousie at the end of the string, she went right for the string itself.  I
can't think of a way of getting around this, except maybe spraying bitter
apple on the string itself, but I'm afraid that might backfire.

It's been more than 48 hours, now, and she seems to have the general idea.
She's nervous about the top platform, so I put a few treats on the two upper
levels to get her to climb up there on her own.  Getting down seems to be
scarier than getting up; she uses a trombone case standing nearby to climb
down from the middle platform to the bottom one.  I'm just nervous she'll jump
on the case none-too-lightly one time and send it crashing down, scaring
herself half to death.

We're trying to give her the idea that the tree is for play, not just for
sleeping.  We throw fuzzy toys to her while she's on the tree and she (mostly)
catches them.  I hope she'll eventually get more comfortable being up high
on a smallish platform.  As a kitten, she certainly climbed much higher than
this!

The one thing I've noticed is that the tower is ... well, wobblier than I
expected.  It's not really wobbly, but there's a bit of vibration if Oscar's
jumping around.  We'll be tightening everything up in a few days, as per
instruction, so maybe that will help.  I can tell that it weirds her out.

Oh, and as near as I can tell, it hasn't distracted her from counters at all.
The plant she was eating on the counter is now locked away in the guest
bedroom (Oscar is very offended that I've locked her out of that room).  The
sticky paws double-sided tape didn't phase her, either.  *sigh*