Why is it so hard to find pet furniture that looks pleasant?
For pet owners across all walks of life, the hunt for high-quality furniture and equipment to keep their companions healthy and happy often comes at the expense of good design. This is especially true for cat owners, who typically rely on indoor structures and toys to keep their feline friends entertained and healthy.
Cat climbers and trees are key here to help maintain cardiovascular health and encourage consistent cat activity. Some of these structures are more elaborate than others, with perches and enclaves to help foster territorial play and perching, two other essential feline health components. But we can all agree that a majority of these structures are quite ugly.
Beyond being an eyesore, the ugliness in pet furniture design also usually accompanies a lack of build quality. Pet products are usually manufactured using cheap, disposable materials that are both ecologically harmful and pose a danger to the animal if they are used or built improperly.
Of course, it’s convenient to buy the cheapest cat tree on Amazon that looks serviceable to your cat’s needs and call it a day, aesthetics be damned. But poor quality can become dangerous and a nuisance when taking the feline penchant for climbing, scratching, and jumping into account. No pet owner wants to come home to a destroyed house and an injured cat.
After raising a whopping $7 million for the traveler-centric luggage line G-RO, Netta Dor Shalgi is bringing his expertise in technologically incisive, ergonomic design to the world of pet furniture.
Meow Mews: Making sustainable and pleasant cat furniture
Meow Mews aims to fill the void in sustainable, design-focused wellness havens for cats by kicking off the crowdfunding campaign for “Tree,” its debut collection of modular pet furniture. The initial product line takes an architectural approach to product design, creating a furniture system that encourages feline health while embodying core design principles of simplicity, timelessness, and pure performance.
Launching its Kickstarter campaign on International Cat Day, Meow Mews merges form and function to support feline health without compromising craftsmanship. This is a feline exercise system for the discerning, erudite cat owner. The pre-order campaign allows them to add artful and functional pet furniture into their lives at a discounted price.
“Cat owners have a special relationship with the animals they share an abode with, but the industry standard for feline furniture does not take the needs of cats or their owners into account,” says Dor Shalgi, the founder and CEO of Meow Mews.
Any animal lover knows that maintaining an active lifestyle for their pets hinges on play, diet, and exercise, but keeping pets healthy is no easy task.
Dor Shalgi adds, “our company completely reinvents the idea of what pet furniture can aspire to be. Meow Mews creates an environment that cats can actually enjoy and thrive in first while heightening the aesthetic level of any space through our design perspective.”
That reinvention looks towards an unlikely source of design inspiration for its line: LEGO. Meow Mews’s seven modular product categories build upon each other as modular, statement pieces that cat owners can integrate or remove at their discretion. This modularity makes the product family adaptable to spaces from the most compact Tel Aviv apartment to the most palatial mansion in Caesarea.
Nobody wants to be stuck on the floor for days on end trying to put together furniture for their cat. Most people don’t want to do it for their own human furniture. By utilizing a minimalist, sculptural design language that emphasizes accessible assembly, Dor Shalgi prioritizes the functionality of the product without sacrificing aesthetics and usability.
The “Tree” line is crafted using natural, raw materials such as solid hardwood, cotton, and wool, approaching feline health and happiness with an ethos of quality and sustainability.
In a pet-loving country such as Israel, it’s only natural that the Start-Up Nation’s creative and innovative instincts in tech would translate to other fields. Meow Mews is one such project that emphasizes that shift towards an architectural, design-focused mindset in new fields. Pet owners deserve to have as much access to great design and exercise methods as can fit their animal companion’s needs.