Interview with Josh Feinkind
Photography courtesy of The Refined Feline

Josh Feinkind, founder of The Refined Feline, discusses his company’s luxury line of cat products and the impact stylish pet decor can have on a home.

Tell us how your company began:
Twenty years ago, I was living in a small apartment in northern New Jersey, and one of my roommates had an Abyssinian. The only cat furniture on the market back then was beige, shag-carpeted cat trees, but we wanted nice-looking things in our home. So I decided to create something that’s not only functional but also stylish.

I put out a request to designers and got responses from all around the world. I then shared the designs on Yahoo! groups—that’s how long ago this was— asking people to vote for their favorites and took the two most popular ones to factories in China to develop prototypes. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out so well. When we got the product from the first supplier, it was broken; they didn’t package it for domestic shipping, so it was basically a bunch of wood parts thrown into a box with no packing materials. They also messed up the supports, drilling additional holes so the product looked like Swiss cheese. And the prototype from the second supplier was all green wood, which is inferior for furniture.

Luckily, someone in the pet industry recommended that I go to a trade show being held in nearby Atlantic City, where a Vietnam-based dog furniture manufacturer there told me they could make the items for us. That company has produced them ever since.

Why do customers love The Refined Feline?
Our motto is “Love your cat. Love your home,” which encapsulates what our customers want: great-looking products that are also great for their cats. Our stuff is well built and durable—it’s real furniture made of real wood with beautiful, authentic grain. In fact, some customers still use the same tower they bought twenty years ago. We even make upkeep easy with replacement parts for when a feature like carpeting gets soiled, scratched, or worn.

People also tell us all the time that their product was a breeze to assemble or looks great in their home or that they’ve had one for years and are now buying a second to complement it. It’s a great feeling to make something that customers want to spend their hard-earned money on.

That said, every cat owner knows their pet will use a product, have zero interest in it, or merely play in the box it came in. That’s just how it is, which is why we have a very liberal return policy: after sixty days, if you don’t love it or your cat doesn’t love using it, simply send it back to us. We don’t want our customers to be stuck with our product, and they appreciate that option.

What does such high-quality cat furniture bring to a home?
The furniture is definitely a talking piece. For instance, our Lotus Cat Tower is almost six feet tall and made of bent wood, so guests immediately notice it because it doesn’t look like anything else out there. But at the same time, it’s not an eyesore—it blends in with your home decor and brings something unique to the room. We want to provide the feeling of This is a cat’s house, but we’ve got cool cat furniture

What are your most popular products?
Our first, the Lotus Cat Tower, is still our most popular one. Customers love our cat shelves as well, which complement the tower’s look and color options, along with our litter box furniture, which comes in different sizes and keeps the box concealed but still accessible for the cat.

Also a hit: our newer customizable litter box cabinets. We make the base of the furniture out of wood, but you can take out the front panels and pop in a different style, such as cane-weave, farmhouse, Shaker, or cottage. You can also choose the furniture’s feet to be round, square, midcentury modern, etc. or opt for none at all.

Do you have any new items coming out?
We’re really excited to bring Symba, our automated, refrigerated wet-food feeder, to market—it’s going to be the Cadillac of its kind. Among other features, Symba keeps the food temperature at around 40 degrees, warms it before serving it, and allows you to set a schedule for it to be dispensed via the app whether you’re home or away. We put a lot of thinking into this product and conducted over a year of customer feedback to make it the ideal pet food dispenser.

For more info, visit therefinedfeline.com