Heart to Tail 44″ Cat Activity Tower

Last Updated on January 10, 2024

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Aldi sold this again in January of 2024 for $39.99, which is a whopping $20 less than what we paid for it in February of 2023. This is another great example we’ve seen of Aldi lowering prices on Aldi Finds during the past year. 

My house is full of cat stuff. My nearly 17-year-old cat — whom we fondly call The Aldi Reviewer Cat on the blog — has no idea how spoiled she is. She has an Aldi dozy den bed, an Aldi warming mat, and multiple cardboard playhouses from Aldi. She loves Aldi cat treats and Aldi canned cat food.

Her favorite Aldi product by far is a collapsible cat cube condo. In fact, she likes the condo so much that when it came back into stores not quite a year after I initially bought it, I purchased a second one so she’d have one for both levels of our home. I often find her napping in one of the condos.

Last summer, in an effort to pamper The Aldi Reviewer Cat even more, I researched and purchased a 5-foot-tall cat tower on Amazon to place in my sunroom as a nice bird-watching perch. It includes an enclosed condo napping spot and several scratching posts. These types of cat towers can be very expensive at traditional pet stores such as PetSmart or Petco, and ones I found at those retailers easily cost $100 to $200 or more. The one I purchased on Amazon cost about $65 at the time. It’s huge, and my kids and I have dubbed it Fluffingham Palace. Our cat can sometimes be found napping in the enclosed condo section.

I’ve never seen Aldi sell a tall cat tower. They often sell scratching posts or cardboard scratchers. But the biggest cat products I’ve previously seen Aldi sell include the collapsible cat condo or maybe a fancy pet couch they sometimes stock.

You can never underestimate Aldi when it comes to the variety of products they sell in the middle aisle, though. Much to my surprise, this year, a tall cat tower showed up in the weekly ad.

Even though I already have a much larger cat tower, I couldn’t pass up the chance to put an Aldi cat tower through the paces. I can always put it in the basement so there’s a cat tower on each level of the house.

The Heart to Tail 44″ Cat Activity Tower cost $59.99 at the time of publication. You might be able to find some more full-featured, tall cat towers for less on Amazon, and my bigger tower didn’t cost much more than this one, but this seems pretty competitively priced. It also looks almost exactly like a well-reviewed cat tower on Amazon that’s sold by FEANDREA for the exact same price as the Aldi tower at the time of publication, except the tower on Amazon is only 37.8 inches tall while the Aldi tower is 44 inches tall.

This is an Aldi Find, so it’s only in stores for a short time. Each store gets one shipment, and after that sells out, it’s gone unless Aldi decides to bring it back later. Aldi doesn’t offer online ordering for products that are not in stock at your local store.

Here’s more information about the tower, according to the package:

• Versatile tower for play and lounge
• Cozy hammock keeps cat warm and secure
• Ideal for multi-pet homes
• Includes sisal scratching ramp and posts
• Features a stable base design
• Includes 5-gram catnip packet (sprinkle on tower to activate play)
• Place in front of a window for maximum enjoyment
• Dimensions: 19″ x 19″ x 44″
• Heart to Tail voted Best Brand National Winner in the American Choice Awards

Heart to Tail is not a company. Instead, it’s the private label Aldi uses for various pet products. And Aldi sells a lot of pet products. It seems like at least every other week, if not more often, there are pet supplies of some type in the weekly Aldi ad.

This cat tower doesn’t come with a warranty, but the manual does list a customer service phone number and email for parts or assembly issues. To get help, call 1-844-470-7970 or email support@productconcern.com. Googling the phone number indicates this is the contact information for MACVAD, which specializes in global sourcing and supply. This company has provided after-sales service for several Aldi products over the years, including a shelf floor lamp, a color changing LED strip light, an LED novelty lamp, and more.

Assembling the Cat Tower:

This tower is sold flat packed and weighs a good amount when you pick it up at the store, but it’s not too heavy for one person to carry. It also easily fits in a shopping cart full of groceries and other Aldi goodies, or it can go under the shopping cart.

The front of the assembly manual. (Click to enlarge.)

When you open the box, you’ll find the tower in multiple pieces, along with an assembly manual. The directions in the manual are easy to follow, and everything is clearly labeled. Each piece of the tower has a letter sticker on it that corresponds to pieces shown in the assembly instructions. Compared to some pieces of furniture I’ve recently assembled from other retailers (I’m looking at you, Target bookshelf), these directions are well written and easy to understand, with good illustrations.

Pages one and two of the instructions. (Click to enlarge.)

Page three of the instructions. (Click to enlarge.)

I’m not particularly fast or gifted in assembling furniture. I worked on my own, with cat supervision, and assembled this in about 30 minutes. It wasn’t hard, and it requires no special tools — just the little hex screwdriver that’s included among the hardware. It’s practically identical in design and materials to the cat tower I purchased last summer on Amazon, which my teen assembled without help.

In the middle of assembly. The Aldi Reviewer Cat is supervising from atop her Aldi collapsible cube condo.

These cat towers seem to be pretty easy to put together. The most challenging part was lining up the small hole in the condo sleeve/cover with a hole in the top condo platform piece. It takes some tugging to get the condo sleeve over the condo frame, and I was worried about breaking the elastic band that runs around the bottom of the condo sleeve, but it held up.

The Finished Product:

The finished cat tower.

The assembled cat tower is like a smaller version of the one I ordered off of Amazon several months ago, even down to the color and the type of the fabric on the tower. This is covered with a soft, velvety material with a wood or particle board type of interior. The nest at the very top has a soft, cushy border around it. The sisal scratching ramp and posts are scratchy and prickly, as they are on my larger cat tower, so be careful when handling those parts.

Besides standing 44 inches tall, here are a couple of other measurements:

• The bed perch on the very top measures about 14 inches by 11 inches in terms of actual cat sleeping space, or about 19 inches by 15 inches overall when you account for the cushy border.
• The nest basket is about 12 inches in diameter.
• The enclosed condo is about 11 inches by 11 inches.
• It’s about 18 inches from the floor to the first level of the tower where the condo is.

This tower feels pretty sturdy and I don’t think cats could easily tip it over, especially if you place it near a wall or other support. My five-foot cat tower from Amazon actually came with hardware to secure it to the wall, but this tower does not come with wall-mounting hardware. This Aldi tower is also more than a full foot shorter than my other tower, so it may be less of a hazard if it teeters.

The Aldi Reviewer Cat has briefly explored this new tower. I’m still waiting for her to really take to it, which is no surprise because cats can be fickle. At least I didn’t spend a fortune on this tower.

The Verdict:

The Heart to Tail 44″ Cat Activity Tower looks almost identical to other cat towers on Amazon, and it’s got a similar price. It’s a lot cheaper than other cat towers sold at popular pet stores such as PetSmart or Petco. It assembles with no trouble, is sturdy, and is large enough to accommodate more than one cat. It has a variety of features, including a sisal scratching ramp and posts, an enclosed condo area, a nest basket, and a soft perch at the very top. Place it in front of a window to give your cat a great view of the great outdoors.