BY ZY

LOVE TO CAT AND SOFA

DECORATING WITH CATS: CAT FRIENDLY SOFA

Hello everybody, my apologies for being so absent from the blog***waves wildly * * *. I'm happy to share with you that the third printing of Shop Cats of New York is on and was recently translated into Japanese! A Big thank you for your help, and if you haven't received a copy, then today is still there!

It's been a while since I wrote about (with cats) having an aesthetically pleasing house. I have said for a long time that I want my home to be comfortable for me and my animals, shouting "Welcome to Casa Cat" as visitors walk through the gates.

Sadly, my efforts to teach Kip in lieu of my furniture to use a scratching post failed miserably. However, I was successful in teaching him to use scratching post to show his wish for a treat (insert eye roll emoji here).

Needless to say, throws in my house have become a major decorating accessory because I will never consider declawing them! (I have discovered recently why cats kill furniture in the most popular and difficult areas of our furniture to hide. Read to the end to find out why!).

Once many years ago, having reupholstered my beloved chaise lounge, it was painfully obvious that once again intervention was needed. I was delighted when the people at Cat Friendly Sofa reached out to me about their tailor-made anti-scratch sofa covers, not wanting to waste the cash on reupholstery.

Lusine Manukyan (a fellow Armenian – woot!) and her husband Luigi Delfino, who resides in Putignano, Italy, started Cat Friendly Sofa in 2014. As parents of five cats, they acknowledged that the instinct of a cat to scratch was normal and served many purposes (in an attempt to teach, I love that they explain the reasons why cats scratch on their website). Knowing what to declaw was not a choice, they saw the ne

Taking into account cat scratching behaviour and evaluating different types of materials, they took a lot of time in research and development to find one that is 100 per cent cat evidence. And now, for different kinds of furniture, they make custom covers for cat-loving customers around the world.

Lusine and Luigi are delighted that their product makes adoptions simpler (not to mention keeping cat's claws intact!). They also support Gatto Randagio Onlus, a non-profit organisation in Northern Italy that cares for abandoned cats, encouraging anyone who visit their site to contribute 1 Euro (about $1.25USD) to the community so they can continue their good work.

Check out the Pet Friendly Sofa website or contact us at info@catfriendlysofa.com to get a quote. It is a little stiff given the toughness of the fabric, so you might want to consider just covering the places where your cats scratch the most compared to the whole piece of furniture.

So why do cats always scratch furniture (the arms and never the back of the sofa) in the most obvious places? It turns out that by scratching famous landmarks (like large trees) in the wild, cats mark their territories to make sure that cats in the area get their message loud and clear. And it makes only sense that they do the same in our homes. What the point is, because no one sees it!