Gustaf Westman Takes on the World's Ugliest Piece of Pet Furniture
For years, cat owners have faced an uncomfortable compromise: love your cat, tolerate the eyesore. The typical cat tree — a towering assemblage of carpet-wrapped poles, dangling toys, and beige platforms — has long been one of the most aesthetically offensive objects a design-conscious homeowner can bring into their living space. Swedish designer Gustaf Westman has decided that this no longer has to be the case. Known for his distinctively chunky, sculptural approach to everyday objects, Westman has turned his attention to the humble cat tree and transformed it into something you might actually want to display in your home.
Who Is Gustaf Westman?
Gustaf Westman is a Stockholm-based designer who has built a devoted following for his bold, almost cartoon-like aesthetic. His work is immediately recognizable: thick forms, rounded edges, earthy palettes, and a sculptural weight that feels simultaneously monumental and playful. Westman has applied this signature language to furniture, ceramics, and homeware, earning him a place among the most distinctive voices in contemporary Scandinavian design. His pieces have been celebrated for their ability to blur the line between functional object and art installation — which is precisely what makes him the ideal candidate to reinvent the cat tree.
His previous work includes chunky candleholders, oversized bowls, and furniture pieces that look like they belong in a modern art gallery as much as in a family home. The common thread running through everything he creates is an insistence that utility and beauty are not mutually exclusive. With his new cat tree, Westman extends that philosophy into one of the most neglected corners of interior design: pet furniture.
The Problem With Conventional Cat Trees
It is worth pausing to understand just how thoroughly the conventional cat tree has failed as a designed object. Most commercially available cat trees are engineered entirely around function — or, more accurately, around a narrow interpretation of what cats need. They prioritize height, platforms, and scratching surfaces, wrapping everything in carpet or sisal that clashes with virtually every interior aesthetic imaginable. The result is a product that feels designed for a showroom floor in the 1990s and never updated.
The problem is compounded by the fact that cat trees tend to be large, prominent objects placed in main living areas. Unlike a litter box, which can be tucked out of sight, a cat tree is typically positioned in a corner of the living room or beside a window — somewhere with enough light and visibility to satisfy a cat's natural instinct to survey its territory. This means it sits squarely in your line of sight, unavoidable and often deeply unattractive. For anyone who has spent time and money curating a thoughtful home interior, the arrival of a standard cat tree can feel like a small aesthetic defeat.
Westman's Sculptural Solution
Westman's cat tree applies his signature chunky aesthetic to the form, treating it as a sculptural object first and a piece of pet furniture second. The design retains everything a cat actually needs — climbable levels, a place to perch, surfaces to scratch — while reimagining the overall silhouette as something bold, considered, and visually interesting. Rather than disguising its function, Westman leans into it, creating a piece that is unambiguous in its purpose but elevated in its execution.
The material choices and color palette align with Westman's broader body of work, favoring tones and textures that feel warm and grounded rather than clinical or utilitarian. The forms are rounded and confident, with the kind of deliberate weight that makes his ceramics and furniture so visually satisfying. The result is a cat tree that does not apologize for existing in your home. Instead, it earns its place alongside the rest of your carefully chosen objects.
Why Designer Pet Furniture Matters
The emergence of design-forward pet furniture reflects a broader cultural shift in how we think about our homes and the animals that share them. Pet ownership has grown significantly in recent years, and with it, consumer expectations around pet products have risen. People are no longer willing to accept that caring for a pet requires aesthetic sacrifice. The market for thoughtfully designed pet furniture, feeders, beds, and accessories has expanded accordingly, with designers and brands increasingly recognizing that pet owners are also design consumers who want coherent, beautiful spaces.
- The global pet furniture market has seen consistent growth, driven in part by younger, design-conscious pet owners who prioritize interior aesthetics.
- Designers including Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec and various Scandinavian studios have previously explored pet-focused objects, though the category remains underdeveloped relative to its potential.
- Cat trees in particular represent one of the most fertile areas for design intervention, given how widely owned they are and how consistently poorly designed mainstream options tend to be.
Westman's entry into this space signals that the designer pet furniture category is maturing. When a designer with a serious, well-regarded practice applies their full creative attention to a cat tree, it legitimizes the category in a way that purely commercial products cannot.
A New Benchmark for Pet-Friendly Interiors
What makes Westman's cat tree particularly significant is not just that it looks good — it's that it challenges the assumption that good design and pet ownership exist in separate realms. For too long, the accepted wisdom has been that you make peace with ugly pet furniture because your cat doesn't care about aesthetics. Westman's design suggests a different framework entirely: you choose pet furniture that you love living with, and your cat benefits from the same quality and craft you apply to every other object in your home.
This is, ultimately, what the best design always does. It resolves a tension that previously seemed inevitable, finding a form that serves everyone — including, in this case, the cat. Gustaf Westman's sculptural cat tree is a small but meaningful step toward a future where pet furniture is no longer the exception to the design standards we hold everywhere else in our homes.
Final Thoughts
Gustaf Westman's foray into pet furniture is a natural extension of a design practice built on the belief that everyday objects deserve serious creative attention. By applying his distinctive sculptural language to the much-maligned cat tree, he has produced something genuinely new: a piece of pet furniture that enhances rather than undermines a thoughtfully designed interior. For cat owners who have long struggled to reconcile their love of animals with their love of beautiful spaces, this is exactly the kind of design intervention that has been needed. The ugly cat tree may finally have met its match.