I have had cats and dogs. Our last cat and dog we got within 6 months of each other and they were both around 3 months. We got an old tree branch for the cat "tree" she shredded the bark off of it but never used our furniture. Both those babies lived to be 16 & 17 before crossing the rainbow bridge.
For our current cat, we built her a floor to ceiling cat tree. You can find how to build your own on google. Total cost for building our own was about $25...the style we copied sort of... was $400. I saw one that is really awesome... you build a "tree" with perches hidden in the leaves. You use artificial leaves. Or you can buy a live indoor tree and build the cat tree around it with the perches snuggled between the branches here's the link for what I'm talking about
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://homeinteriordesignthemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/indoor-cat-tree-house-with-leaves.jpg&imgrefurl=
http://homeinteriordesignthemes.com/...kyOzGuHjMaXxfM:&tbnh=134&tbnw=88&ei=knj7TY3EIOjy0gHakumIAw&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dcat%2Btree%2Bplans%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den %26sa%3DN%26rlz%3D1G1GGLQ_ENUS272%26biw%3D711%26bi h%3D457%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=323&vpy=39&dur=711&hovh=268&hovw=146&tx=71&ty=225&page=4&ndsp=12&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:30&biw=711&bih=457
Yes, it's incredibly long but soo cool looking