Cat moving home

R_P_W

Person_one wrote: »

The partner has a cat already, so to the OP's credit she realises that isn't an option.

Yes I know that. Doesn't mean they couldn't get rid of it though does it. Better do now rather than after it destroys your furniture!

Tiddlywinks

R_P_W wrote: »

Yes I know that. Doesn't mean they couldn't get rid of it though does it. Better do now rather than after it destroys your furniture!

I'm guessing you're not a pet lover... :cool:.

If anyone had ever suggested to me that I leave my cats behind... they would have been kicked into touch faster than you could say 'love me, love my cats'.

heartbreak_star

Haha OH's sister hisses at her cats, she sounds remarkably like one when she does it!

I know someone that stuck one of those raffia-type doormats to a wooden wedge and put that up against where the cat scratched on the sofa, and it worked - cat loved it.

HBS x

Jobseeeker

The vet once told me six weeks. Don't know if that was estimate or based on research. The problem is if you let out straight away they will try to find their old home.

Gloomendoom

R_P_W wrote: »

Yes I know that. Doesn't mean they couldn't get rid of it though does it. Better do now rather than after it destroys your furniture!

Nice one. Maybe he should keep the cat and dump the OP?

I made it quite clear when I met the now Mrs G that my cat was part of the deal. No cat, no me. Lucky for me, she didn't didn't have any problem with that.

With regard to the furniture scratching. I provided two pieces of wood, 2" square and about 3 feet long, one downstairs and one upstairs for him to scratch on. He shredded those but rarely touched anything else.

Edit: When I brought him to our current house I tried to keep him in for the prescribed six weeks but he didn't even last 48 hours. After several foiled attempts to escape by climbing up the chimneys (what a mess!) he jumped out of the upstairs loo window and disappeared. One sleepless night followed but he came trotting back down the lane at five the next morning.

GwylimT

We are yet to have a cat that doesn't scratch furniture, despite having an array of scratching posts (some even screwed to corners of the wall where they started scratching the wallpaper off), if you have a cat you have to accept that your furniture might get scratched.

We have always kept ours in for around three weeks, but that was when moving quite a distance, when we did a move of about a mile we waited longer as he was more likely to trot off back home.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

One of mine has never scratched furniture once. She likes clawing at the rug in the bedroom, though. The other one likes shredding the wooden kitchen table legs, but it was a £20 table from iKEA, so it's not a huge bother for me. Neither have ever showed the slightest inclination to claw anything else in the house, including chair legs, coffee table legs, other rugs, the bed frames, door frames, the stair carpet (sisal - just like their scratching post), chairs or sofas.

Get the largest scratching/perching cat tree you can fit into the house and he will probably love it.

FBaby

Mine did it but stopped when we got a scratching post. She loves it and has never used anything else since.

Rachylou1981

Thanks for all the replies and advice

Just to respond to RPW's comment and subsequent ones. He/she is right to an extent. I don't want and have never wanted a pet even though I love animals. My house is just too small and I'm out a lot and go on holidays all the time. The cat also belongs to boyfriend's housemate (he got him) and he was always going to keep him in the longterm but circumstances have meant that he may not be able to take him now.

I can't bear to get him rehomed as I love him too and so I have accepted the fact that he may ruin my fabulous sofa :eek:

(my neighbour has agreed to look after him during holidays by the way)

farfromhome

Rachylou, thank you for wanting to keep the cat. My husband was never a cat lover (only liked dogs) until we got "our" rescue cats and now wouldn't be without them.

We had one sofa destroyed (literally clawed off everything until the wooden frame showed) and our divan bed clawed because they all loved pulling themselves around the outside (I hope that makes sense!). We found, with a combination of scratch posts in front of the sofa and the bed, as well as coir/sisal doormats, they suddenly stopped scratching the sofa and the bed. No problems since with the exception of the old stair carpet which one of the cats loves scratching. Still hoping she might stop one day so that we can replace the carpet.

We never managed to keep our cats in for more than a fortnight after moving. One actually escaped within a hour of moving into the new place into some playing fields at the bottom of the garden. We could see her but could not get close to her; she eventually returned after a couple of hours (one of us stayed outside all the time) and she was happy to come in then. Very strange, it was as if she knew the place!

Hope everything works out ok.