Cell adhesion to material surfaces is a fundamental phenomenon in tissue response to implanted devices, and an important consideration in tissue engineering. The first objective of this study was to measure the mechanical adhesiveness characteristics of rabbit articular chondrocytes as a function of seeding time to provide further understanding of the cell adhesion process. The second objective was to quantify the tether formation force and tether stiffness as a function of seeding time. With increasing time of seeding up to 6 hours, chondrocytes exhibited increasing mechanical adhesiveness, tether formation force and tether stiffness, as measured using the cytodetacher and optical tweezers system. Concomitantly, cell contact area and cell height, as measured using inverted microscope and confocal imaging, were found to increase and decrease respectively.