(Link to purchase a Curve cat bed with 25% discount at bottom of article)

When your interior design aesthetic is more sleek contemporary, than paw print kitsch, how do you find modern cat furniture to meet your fur babies’ needs but that doesn’t also make you cringe every time you see it?

If you’re Akemi Tanaka, you design something that’s never been seen before.

Only Nice Things

The inspiration for the Curve by Akemi Tanaka cat bed was born of frustration. The proud new owner of an apartment in Brooklyn, Tanaka was thrilled to finally have a place of her own to decorate just the way she wanted.

And that meant no ugly, cheap, or plastic cat furniture, and especially no cat trees. As she puts it, “That cat tree is not paying rent, so it’s not getting any floor space!”

Tanaka also didn’t want anything that was obviously for a cat.

“I didn’t want it to have paw print fabric on it,” she told Keeping It Pawsome. “Why do you need that? You cat doesn’t need that! Why does a cat thing have to scream cat? It just doesn’t have to.”

What she wanted was something that would blend into her apartment, so that if someone visited who wasn’t a cat person, they wouldn’t even notice it.

After several months of looking for something less kitschy, Tanaka had a realization. With an industrial design background (she has an MFA from Pratt Institute), why couldn’t she just create an elevated cat bed that would make her and her cats happy?

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Cat-Friendly

But designing cat furniture that pleases your design aesthetic isn’t enough if you truly care about your kitties. The item in question also has to serve your cat’s needs, be functional, and safe.

Tanaka was no stranger to cats. Growing up in New Jersey, her family always had at least one cat. And as soon as she graduated college, she took the family cat to live with her. In 2007, when she began first began designing an aesthetically pleasing, but functional cat bed, she and her husband were living with three cats.

Among the requirements her wall-mounted cat bed would need to meet was an ability for the cats to sleep on it, without falling off.  While a flat piece of wood was the most obvious choice, Tanaka didn’t feel comfortable with her cats sleeping on that. Though she knew she wanted to place one or two of the beds near the window so the cats could see out, she also intended to place some of them high enough up the wall that a fall could be dangerous.

Another requirement was that the bed be sturdy and not wobble so the cats always felt secure when jumping onto it. (Design-wise this was the piece that caused Tanaka the most headaches and took several months to figure out — months after everything else was finalized!)

The Curve Cat Bed is Born

It didn’t take long for Tanaka to settle on a curved wooden design. Making use of neutral color schemes like white and walnut, with similarly hued upholstered padding, the design has a “mid-century” vibe.

Its slim profile blended in easily with her home decor and the cats loved it.

The best spot for a Curve cat bed is attached to the wall beneath or next to a window. Tanaka has one next to her desk so her cats have somewhere to sit when she’s working — other than across her computer. She also puts Curves high up the wall, in spots where they first need to jump on the sofa or the bed to reach the Curve.

Some customers, she says, even put them as high as above doors.

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Check out these adorable cats in Halloween costumes.

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The World Wants In

When Tanaka designed the Curve cat bed, she never intended to sell it. It was simply a way to give her cats something to sleep, play, and climb on.

But the world had other plans.

In the midst of showing a set of cabinets she had designed at International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City in 2008, she decided to throw one of the Curves on the wall to give the entire setup a complete visual feel. 

As it turned out, no one cared about the cabinets, but they couldn’t get enough of the cat bed.

“Everyone was way more excited about the cat bed, because no one had ever seen anything like it,” Tanaka said.

The search for something sleek and modern is what had prompted her to create it. And, as it turned out, there were plenty of other people with similar design aesthetics desperate for something to provide their cats that they weren’t embarrassed by. 

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Check out these cute cats in Halloween costumes!

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Curve Takes Off

The demand was great enough that Tanaka started manufacturing the Curve herself. This required having eight-food pieces of bent wood sent to her parent’s home in New Jersey, getting her father or mother to help her cut it, then veneering the wood herself, having custom-designed brackets made in Connecticut, purchasing upholstery in the Garment District of New York City, then getting the padding sewed into the material in NYC’s West Village, , and finally shipping it all out herself.

Within a year orders were too numerous for her to keep up with and Tanaka found a manufacturer overseas.

When she finally had a chance to consider designing other modern cat furniture, she found other designers had followed in her footsteps.

“I feel like my work is done,” she says. “A lot more designers have started designing nice stuff.”

25% Off for Keeping It Pawsome Readers

Today Curve cat beds are available in two wood stains (birch and walnut) and five upholstery colors/styles.

You can purchase Curve on Amazon and Wayfair, but if you purchase directly from https://akemitanaka.com/shop.html and use the coupon code “pawsome,” you’ll get 25% off your order.

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