It all started with a single cat tower.
Dissatisfied with the selection of cat towers on the market, Darryl Michaelson decided to build his own. His first build was a simple stand made from found wood scraps, construction pallets, and wood beams he stacked on top of each other and then covered in a layer of carpet.
The piece was a hit with his cat. Michaelson continued to create new pieces, experimenting with various designs, and by the summer of 1991 he was selling his cat furniture at the Minnesota State Fair.
“It literally went from a hobby to doing the greatest show on Earth—it’s a really cool job,” he says.
Soon after, Michaelson went full brick-and-mortar, finding a small storefront in downtown St. Paul for the business he’d come to call Purrniture. But business was booming, and, as any cat owner knows, those kitty condos and towers take up a lot of space. In 1997, Purrniture relocated to its current spot at 2242 University Ave. W. in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood.
Michaelson believes that a lot of cat furniture on the market doesn’t serve the needs of the customer—or catstomer, as he’s fond of calling them. Tons of items out there are poorly constructed and made out of cheap material. The carpet covering most commercial cat furniture is rough to the touch, and cat towers are often made from flimsy material that wobbles or breaks under the weight of chonkier pets.
Michaelson says he designs pieces that are intended to be stable and long-lasting, built to accommodate the instincts of real cats. “I’m really supplying the cat, the cat is my customer,” he says. Pets want to be involved in what their humans are doing, so he believes a cat tree should have multiple perches and tunnels that meet those needs.
“Cats don’t like feeling trapped,” he notes.
When designing the tower called Orbiter, for example, he wanted to create a piece that had the enclosed spaces that cats like, while constructing something bigger and less claustrophobic than the typical cat tree.
Each cat tower is handcrafted from recycled materials sourced from local businesses, including carpet scraps and wooden spools initially used to store electrical wires. These items usually cannot be reused by the original business nor can they be easily recycled, so in that way Purrniture’s wares are up-cycled and eco-friendly as well.
Over the decades, Michaelson’s designs have attracted an avid fan base of happy cat owners and, based on the adorable customer pics on his website, happy cats.
Customers are even willing to travel from out of state for Purrniture. Matthew and Amanda Drehmell drive all the way from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, every few years to buy cat trees for their four cats.
“There’s new things every time we come here,” Amanda says.
Malaya Stevenson, whose partner bought a cat tower from Purrniture in April, says she appreciates the durability of the furniture, and loves that the store continues to help with wear and tear, allowing customers to either trade in old cat furniture or bring in worn down pieces so they can be refurbished with new rope.
As business continues to grow, a bigger and better showroom has become a necessity. So last year Michaelson began a large-scale expansion of his store. While he says that his furniture was once “piled up to the ceiling,” this renovation will triple the amount of space of the showroom, giving him room to spread out. In the cheapo, gotta-have-it-now age of Amazon, that’s no small feat for an independently owned cat furniture (sorry) purrrrrveyor.
“It’s all been going the way that I dreamed,” he says. “I wanted to have a cat furniture superstore, and I’ve finally achieved it.”
Renovations also include a new cat adoption center, or “catio,” that Michaelson built from scratch. Each week, three or four foster cats available for adoption will be hanging out in their own enclosed space where they can play and relax on cat furniture, interact with guests, and, hopefully, get adopted into forever homes.
Michaelson hopes that all of the improvements at Purrniture will be done by mid-August, so that he and his employees can begin preparing their wares for the Minnesota State Fair.
“I can see the end in sight,” Michaelson says. “Just gotta putz at it until it’s all done.”
