Pets and furniture - Do the two go well together?

[woodpecker]

I have a lot of great furniture around as well as a couple of cats. I haven't declawed them; so naturally they feel that it is a good idea to sharpen their claws on the furniture. Now, I can shoo them off if they try this in front of me. But I can't stand near the furniture and protect it all the time. What would you suggest? Please don't tell me to get rid of the cats. I want both furniture and cats.

 

[heretoday]

In regards to cats

I'll be very anxious to hear what the suggestions about this topic may be. It is the nature of cats to be curiously attracted to whatever they are shooed away from. Maybe a cat scratch pole with some catnip scent might be more attractive to them?

 

[alaine]

Cover the furniture with aluminum foil for a week or two on any spots they are likely to sit on. Most cats hate the sound of foil because it hurts their ears. A few weeks of that might train them to stay off certain furniture.

 

[Kitten]

Depending on what kind of furniture, there are some sprays you can spray around the general area that cats don't like. I don't have the recipes handy, but I've used some that are "homemade" so I can skip the chemicals and the cats don't like the smell of it....eventually, they just stop going near them altogether.

 

[Daydreamer1]

Roll up some carpet with the underside out, then spray catnip on it.

Cats like to get their claws deep into the soft items they "scratch" to stretch the tendons in their toes.

Most scratching posts have the nap or walking side of the carpet facing out and the cats can't get their claws in deep enough.

I hope that works!

 

[Woodyoumind?]

I've tried the aluminum foil trick but it didn't work for me. I had silver covered furniture for a while but the cat didn't mind at all. She just kept on clawing the aluminum foil-but then she's strange.

 

[Woodyoumind?]

One thing I was going to ask was-Has anyone had any experience breaking puppies from chewing wooden furniture. I have an antique 8 sided table that one of my puppies destroyed the bottom rungs on. I know there is a bitter spray you could use but it doesn't do well on varnished or shellacked furniture. Is there an alternative?

 

[baguiopine]

It's really normal for animals to do that to furnitures but I haven't experience such destruction because I would have the cat or dog in a cage when inside the house.

 

[woodywoodpecker]

Why didn't you just make it an outside dog (preferably before it did that to the table) lol! Nah, just razzing you. I just don't know what you would need to do to make one stop that.

 

[heretoday]

The idea about the foil is intriguing and I'm going to file it away in my "just in case" file. Of course, that's not withstanding the fact that Woodyoumind has a weird cat that didn't mind the crinkly foil sound