I'm taking a moment to celebrate my true love. Cats. To be clear, I absolutely qualify for crazy cat lady status, and I don't care who knows it. They're soft, they smell good, they make crazy sounds, they're hilarious, and pound-for-pound they're the most formidable predators in the animal kingdom.
Cats are punk rock - you can't tell them what to do. Cats have super powers - like invisibility the ability to sleep anywhere. Cats are awesome. And you know who else agrees with me? Ernest Hemingway, Karl Lagerfeld, every 8-year-old girl in the world, the Egyptians, and infinity billion viewers of cat videos streaming on the internet all-day every day.
Now let's take a moment to discuss things I like. . .less. I do not love a litter box. I do not love owning a sofa for 6 months and returning from vacation to discover the cat has waited until the humans were gone to scratch it to bits. I do not love the glass jar of Q-Tips on my bathroom shelf being knocked into the toilet, filling the bowl with cotton, tiny paper sticks, and shards of glass. I don't enjoy waking up to the sound of a cup of water being over-turned on the nightstand on to my iPhone. And then sprinting to the kitchen to put the iPhone in a bag of rice and seeing that the cats water dish is entirely full of water. And I really don't love discovering the pile of laundry I left on the floor because I was late for work soaked in cat piss at the end of a long day. The valuable lesson here is that cats are also assholes, and their potential for destruction is what you might get if you mixed a raccoon with a monkey and kept it indoors for its entire life. They are thuggish ruggish to the bone and they will ruin your house if you let them. Here's my guide for avoiding turning your feline into a pair of mittens because they destroyed your blinds, ate all the leaves off your ficus before puking it back up on your best pair of Jordans, and ripped all the button tufting off your $5,000 sofa for their own amusement.
Best upholstery options
This is the biggest kitty conundrum. Some folks will suggest you get leather furniture. But they’ve clearly never met the absolute criminal residing in my house who was happy to let our leather sofa live in peace but scratched the leather Barcelona chair until we had to call hospice to guide it with dignity in to the afterlife. Other folks will suggest you get microsuede. But I would sooner have the cats scratch my eyes out than put microsuede furniture in my home. The best fabrics to deter and/or stand up to scratching are tightly woven options like cotton twill, or an outdoor fabric that doesn’t scream patio cushion. Sunbrella makes the best options, and as a bonus, they’re also kid-proof. Velvet is also a good option. It has a cut pile, rather than looped fibers, which pull easily when cats get their claws in. The only down side to velvet is that you’ll need to do regular passes with the lint roller to rid it of pet hair.
Litter Boxes
Nothing will ruin your efforts at having a stylish home more than a hideous plastic box in the corner of a room filled with cat shit. Here are some better options.
Claw Your Way to the Top
A scratching post is non-negotiable. Scratching is a natural need for cats, and if you don’t give them something to scratch on, your furniture will live in a constant state of fear for the rest of its life. And since style is a natural need for me, if I have to live with a hideous carpeted scratching post, I will live in a constant state of ugliness for the remainder of my life. You should have more than one scratching post placed in prominent hang out or sleeping spots. If kitty seems uninterested in the scratching post, catnip or toys can be used to make the post more enticing, but another good trick is to move the post in to the middle of the room for a day or two. As a cat-owner, you should know that they will check out any new object if it’s right in the middle of a room. I also notice that when I periodically move my posts around to new locations, the post gets extra heavy use for a few days.
If you’ve been forced to buy new furniture specifically because the monsters ruined the old furniture with scratching, put double-sided tape on the arms and sides of the new furniture as soon as it arrives in the house and leave it on for the first 2 weeks. It’s not glamorous, but it’s only 2 weeks and it’s very effective. This also works like a champ on box springs. If you’re worried about the adhesive compromising more delicate fabrics, put painters tape on the upholstery first and then cover the painters tape with the double-sided tape. You can try this on furniture that has already been scratched as well, but definitely use the painters tape/double stick tape method so any loose threads won’t be pulled further when you remove the tape.
Sleepy Kitties
Save the Trees
If you’ve got a leaf-eater or a planted-pot pisser on your hands:
Method 1: Shake up some cayenne pepper or vinegar with water in a spray bottle and mist your plant and/or the surrounding soil with the solution. It should be SPICY to the taste. Spicy enough to sting their little mouths and paws when they chomp your ferns or scratch around in the dirt. You can also try a special no-no bottle with this mixture to squirt them with when they get into the plants.
Method 2: Use the double stick tape method to create a little tape island on the floor with the planter in the middle until the cats stop paying attention to the irresistible greenery beckoning them into mischief.
Method 3: Bitter Apple. This product was developed for dogs to discourage destructive chewing or neurotic biting at hot spots, but it works the same for cats. It also work really well for cord biters.
Curated Like the Guggenheim
If you’ve got a real jerk who loves to knock breakable items off high places, you can thwart their efforts by using Museum Putty. It’s a white putty used by museums to anchor ceramic or glass items to a flat surface to avoid accidental breakage and minimize damage during earthquakes. Museum Gel and Museum Wax are clear, if your items are glass or on a glass shelf. Just ball up a few pieces of the putty, stick them evenly spaced to the underside of the piece, and squish the object down in place on the shelf.
Closet Door Openers
All the closets in my house have sliding closet doors. And all the cats in my house want to open them and climb inside to pee on things. Depending on how determined your cat is, here are some links to hardware options for keeping the doors closed. One is a thin magnetic cabinet latch. Mount one side to the edge of the door and the other to the inside of the door frame. You can also install a cabin door hook or a teardrop privacy latch.
Window Watchers
It’s a fool’s errand to try and keep them out of the window. You can always tell who has cats because their mini blinds are broken and bent from the cat forcing the blinds open to climb through the slats. Roller shades are a much better option. When the cats get up on the window sill, they just paw the panel away from the glass and hop right up. I opted for solar shades in my house, which are made from a tightly woven, but flexible cat proof acrylic. Roman shades made of fabric or canvas work as well, but cat hair accumulates on the panels. Bamboo roller shades are another option. If kitty starts to chew on the edges just use that Bitter Apple we talked about earlier. My choice for affordable roller shades are from blinds.com
Cat Proof the Nightstand
Here are some of my favorite products to prevent nocturnal feline shenanigans from disturbing your slumber.
