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Ok, OK, OK,

sooo...I have annoyed my dog mom's and dad's long enough today...So I am switching sides to my cat mommies and daddies.

Sooo...problem is such:

Please stick with me on this one.

I have two cats. Both totally indoor cats not declawed. I had a nice enough couch. I bought it used but it was nice. Well, it took them all of 6 months to turn it into yesterday's trash.

Gaby Baby suggestted soft paws, the stuff you put on the cats claws. That is certainly an option. BUT! I have a male fixed cat that pees at will.

Now I have figured out how to deal w/ my dog and his "issues"

My cats are a different story!

How do you keep your cats from destroying your couches? I finally broke down and bought new ones and they will be delivered this Friday.

Also if you do have a fixed male cat that just pees just b/c he can (yes vet checked) what do you do?

Do you live with this?

Do you lock him in a comfy room w/ toys?

What about the scratching? Do you keep them out of your living room? Or do you just live with messed up couches?!

Soo my wonderful SI friends, how do you deal w/ your cat issues? Where are your boundries?

[This message edited by Exit Wounds at 9:16 AM, December 18th (Wednesday)]

Ok the peeing issue can be difficult to fix. I would limit his free range of the home when you can't keep an eye on him. Lock him in a confined area with a CLEAN litter box otherwise. Like a large bathroom bedroom or basement. I had one male who was very particular bout his box. I had to clean it daily otherwise he would find other places to pee. Keep laundry blankets, and so forth up off the floors and out of corners too. Add a second box for him as well.

To keep them from scratching up the new stuff? I'm dealing with this issue right now myself. Brand new leather couch and a 1.5 year old kitty who is all cat and has those crazy spells where she tears through the house at a million miles an hour with no particular destination. She is a rescue and we had to promise to not declaw her So I trim her nails about every 3 days. She doesn't care for this but does tolerate it. If I catch when she is sleepy. We have the new couch covered with quilts and blankets as well. She did get a few marks on it I'm the first day but no more since.

She has a scratcher thingy that she uses to "sharpen" her paws so she does not do it to the furniture. That was rubbed down with blankets from her litter mates and catnip. The shelter gave it to us when we got her.

Good luck!

I have a 2yr old cat and a 3month old foster kitty. Neither scratch the furniture, but I think it's because of what I have for them. In the family room there are 2 big cat trees, 3 small cat trees, 1 scratcher thing (real descriptive) , 3 tunnels, a tent, 80 bazillion toys, an ottoman that has a kitty entrance for them to hide in, and a bookcase that looks like steps for them to climb. They have so many options that they leave the furniture alone.

(Each cat tree has scratching posts).

*standing up* Hi, my name is jo2love and I buy too much cat stuff.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:22 PM, December 17th (Tuesday)]

Forgot to add. I am a failure at keeping them from walking across the laptop. They change the brightness of the screen, make the keyboard not work till rebooted, turn airplane mode on, etc...

jo2love, you really need to pay more attention to those poor kitties...

Re: scratching. If I'm not around to supervise, they are locked out of the living room. I have a squirt bottle at hand so when they act up, they get wet. They know when they see it what is going to happen & bad behaviour stops.

Re: peeing. Is this a new development? If yes, I'd have the vet check him out. Sometimes the way that cats show that they are sick is by peeing/pooping outside the box. If medical conditions are excluded, you can add an extra box, make sure it's clean, and make sure he isn't mad at you. Cats can be real passive aggressive. They'll let you know that they're pissed.

*standing up* Hi, my name is jo2love and I buy too much cat stuff.

You TOTALLY do!

Most cats don't like to be sprayed with water upon bad behavior. You really just have to squirt them a couple of times, then they'll start behaving. There are also sprays for furniture that are meant to deter the behavior (they use scents). As jo mentioned, lots of toys of their own works well, too.

I have scratched up couches. I have a kitty condo with a scratching post and two single scratching posts. Just one of the three cats is a furniture scratcher.

It's frustrating. I tried catnip on the scratching posts and 'scratch-off' spray on the furniture. She still scratches. I cut her nails when she lets me.

I'm resigned to always having couches with the corners shredded. It makes me sad.

I don't do toys because I find that they all wind up under the furniture on the first day.

Maybe I'll buy 10 more scratching posts .

jo2love, you really need to pay more attention to those poor kitties

Ebay has brand new cat trees at reasonable prices. I bought small ones for my sisters' cats for Christmas. Normally they are $60 each plus tax. I paid $19 for 1 and $20 for the other. Both had free shipping.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:35 PM, December 17th (Tuesday)]

aluminum foil. tape it to the areas you don't want the cats scratching or jumping on (tented up a bit on flat surfaces so it makes that annoying sound when stepped on). It's worked for us in our potted plants where ours were digging, as well as with one of our old cats years ago that loved to scratch the corners and back of the couch.

[This message edited by unfound at 4:38 PM, December 17th (Tuesday)]

I gave one of these to my older sister. We put it on the floor right near the spot her cat loved to scratch on the couch. It seems to have helped her. It costs about $8.

Double stick tape works well, too Place it on the corners where they scratch and they'll stop because they don't like sticky stuff on their paws.

We have a floor-to-ceiling cat tree looking out a window in the loft. We live at the top of a hill, so I'm sure our cats feel like they're lording over the neighborhood- and they LOVE that!

Experiment with different scratcher types and orientations. Cats are picky. Mine loves the type like jo2love posted and won't even bother with a vertical or carpet scratching post, and I hate the cardboard ones because they are a mess

I use a spray bottle, too, but also give my cat a treat every time she scratches the cat posts. She'll meow, run to it, look right at me, and scratch to get a treat. I also don't leave her unattended for long periods in the rooms with good furniture.

I fully agree with all the suggestions about the peeing, especially seeing the vet. UTIs are so common especially in male cats.

And that often leads to litter box problems. If he has been peeing in random places, you MUST clean those places thoroughly to get rid of residual scent.

Sticky paws double sided tape!

What about the scratching? Do you keep them out of your living room?

I actually trained our cats to not enter the living room. They would sit at the doorway.

Then, H rescued a little kitty a few years ago and Max loves to run into the living room and screeches to a halt in the far corner. He then flops over and meows. We can't figure him out, but he makes us LAUGH! This in turn led to me lacking the discipline to discipline! He is just too cute and funny.

Now the other two cats are allowed to come in to the living room (my domain)and cat nap. They don't bother scratching at the furniture.

They save that for the old beat-up couch in H's domain.

They do have a scratching post which H has re-covered a few times. It is well-used. The spray bottle of water has been effective, too.

Peeing? Our oldest cat is usually an outdoor cat (neutered), but he was injured a couple of weeks ago. He has been inside and today I noticed that he "decorated" the bottom portion of my kitchen oven. I got out the Lysol and cleaned up. There are sprays and other commercial products out there, but we have never bothered. Cats don't like citrus odours, and Febreze has worked on the hall table legs.

Keeping the litter box(es) clean is essential! Cats can be very, very picky!

This is a real problem for me. My momma cat is a rescue. She never learned how to use the litter box quite right. She does fair but she also pees everywhere and on anything that is left on the floor.

When she was a kitten, we got the plastic bags for the litter box trying to keep it a little cleaner. Well this just taught her to pee on any plastic bag she found on the floor. Then she graduated to peeing on just about everything that was left on the floor. I just threw away all the Christmas stockings because they were christened.

The boy cat (one of her kittens) - she was fixed after having a litter - will pee occasionally but he is not as bad as the momma. I will admit that I am not real good about keeping their litter box clean. I guess I really need to step up my dilligence on this.

Both cats are horrible on scratching up the furniture. Every chair and couch is torn up on the corners. One thing that I have seen that seems to work - GF's mother puts clear tape on the corners of her chairs and couches and it has stopped the cat from scraching. EW - try that on your new couches. Maybe it will help to keep them looking nice.

We put double-sided tape stuff (sold at pet store) that the cats don't like when we got our new furniture. That helped alot and now they don't even try to scratch where the tape was.

We also found a can of spray (might have been called Boundaries if I'm not mistaken). It has an odor that the cats HATE! They wouldn't even come in the room the first time we sprayed the chair (we may have used a tad too much ).

My mother always says "catch them early!" which can either mean teach them not to scratch when they're young or teach them not to scratch a NEW piece of furniture, make it "not theirs".

Our old lady cat is not a scratcher - until a new piece of furniture is brought in, and then her first move upon inspecting it is to use it as a scratching post.

Knowing that she will inspect it, what we do is "unbox" the furniture and more or less stay in the room with it that afternoon and evening - scratching post (we use the tower of wound up rope variety) directly across the room. Old lady cat will approach new couch, sniff, oh so caaaasually stretch her old lady back by extending her paws upward and just happen to rest them on the couch, also just happening to have her claws extended....and this is when we do the "ah ah ah!" noise and immediately unhook her and bring her in position over to the scratching post.

We have to do this many times that day and evening -she'll keep trying for it, like 10 or 20 times that first day and it's a huge pain in the ass. She might even try it the next day or so, and no matter how tired we are we still leap in and "ah ah ah" and redirect. Then she admits to herself that the couch isn't hers and leaves it alone forever. More or less. Sometimes there's still the slight devious inclination to stretch her poor little old back while extending her paws coincidentally while she's near the couch arm, looking over at us to communicate her innocent intentions. We squash her charade with a look. We're really mean and selfish that way.

OMG you guys are hilarious! I just looove all your stories. I can clearly see that the cats run the show here

Thank you all for your response, your advice and your wonderful stories you shared with me! I truly get a kick out of reading this stuff.

XOXO

Vulcanized:

Cats can be real passive aggressive.

Circe:

We squash her charade with a look. We're really mean and selfish that way

.

There is so much more funnies I would like to post but you guys just have to read this thread for yourselves

OMG! I am laughing my butt off.

[This message edited by Exit Wounds at 9:31 AM, December 18th (Wednesday)]