Cats & Leather Sofas

lilmissmup

We are getting second hand sofas from my OH's Dad next weekend but I am worried as one of my cats has a leather "fetish" and ruins shoes and bags that look like leather as well as real leather.

Can you get deterrants or home tips to stop her scratching the sofas? I am ruined she is going to wreck it!!!

Dave1979

We used a spray from the pet shop (I think it has cloves in it which they hate) when the cats were kittens to stop them using them as scratching posts.

Although they don't use them as scratching posts the sofas still get pretty scratched just from them running over them when they are in their "nuts" phase of the day. We just got a cream from the sofa shop that is the same colour as the sofa which hides the scratches - well makes them less noticeable at least!

[Deleted User]

Like the previous poster, I've been using a leather cream to 'hide' the scratches, but have to say that our leather sofas have suffered pretty badly in the few weeks that we've had our cats. When they have their crazy moods, there's nothing we can do to stop them running over the sofas and in the process scratching them. Mind you, we have two cats and they are pretty young, and wind each other up! You could try putting a throw on the sofa during your cat's most active time of day? And I can recommend the spray, although I haven't tried it on the leather.

Mrs_P_Pincher

When we bought our sofas, the nice young man in DFS assured us that, if we paid extra for the aniline leather, it would be dyed all the way through and would not show any scratches, although he said that cats usually avoid leather. To our eternal shame, we believed him!

Our sofas are very scratched now and more so since one of my boys had a stroke and now hooks his claws in and drags himself up onto the arm. I polish them regularly, but it doesn't make a lot of difference.

Every time he does that, Mr P dies another small death.

Mrs P P

lindyloo47

Cats and leather sofas are not a match made in heaven. We have put throws over the arms now but should have done this from day one!

notisis

Try and train your cat. We didn't when we had our first boy until after he'd destroyed the bottom of one sofa arm. Huge scatch post, lots of encouragement and treats (he became addicted to temptations) but would threaten to scratch unless he got his treat! Mind you he also liked doing this to the side of two door frames as well. Our current two are very good and always use their scratch posts but it's too late as the sofa arm is scratched to hell but at least they haven't made it any worse or damaged anywere else.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

I have a very scratched leather sofa that's about 10 years old and looks it. I also have a very scratched fabric armchair that is about 2 years old. The 2 year old fabric chair looks about 20 years old, compared to the condition of the 10 year old leather.

So leather still wins in my eyes.