Cats and leather furniture

[UNCLE PAULY]

Last November I bought a Hancock and Moore Austin sofa and waiting on a H&M Sadler recliner to be delivered. Both in cavalier oxblood leather (hybrid protected?).
There is an older sectional leather sofa in the basement. New wood furniture and hand knotted oriental rugs in living room and dining room on new wood floors. The basement and upstairs bedroom floors have new thick carpeting.

So now that my townhouse is freshly painted with new carpet, wood floors, rugs and leather and wood furniture, fixed up just right, I start thinking of bringing a pair of cats (kittens) into the house.
Have had cats and dogs all my life but now I'm living alone and away 10-12 hours a day working M - F. So dogs are out of the question with this schedule and I thought a pair of cats could keep each other company and are independent enough to survive my work schedule.

My big fear is having the cats destroy the beautiful and expensive H&M leather sofa and recliner.

I would have plenty of cat toys and a scratching pole on each floor but still worry two cats might be a bad idea. Also any thoughts about declawing?
Looking for advice from those that have cats and leather furniture.

Thanks, Paul

[Estes]

probably a bad idea if you are gone so much.

[wisejd]

We have several leather H&M pieces including a Sofa and a recliner. Our daughter's family goes away quite often for a week or so at a time and they bring their two cats over to our house each time they travel. What we have noticed is that at least these two cats tend to like upholstered furniture more than the leather pieces. The only time they want to jump up on the Sofa or Recliner is if we are sitting in them. These two cats have their front claws removed but do have their natural rear claws. Over more than a year of cat-sitting quite a number of times we have noticed zero negative impact from their visits. They have not harmed our wood floors or leather furniture in the slightest. They tend to curl up on the carpet or on a dining room chair particularly if they can find some sunshine. We have no fear of going away even for a night or two with the cats staying home and having the run of the house. Our experience is certainly not a scientific finding that could be applied to all cats, but it is what we have found. By the way one of the cats acts more like a dog in that it loves to curl up in your lap, while the other one is more typical cat and never would by-choice jump up in your lap. Both enjoy being petted or brushed, but do maintain their individual personalities. Even in the middle of the night when they sometimes play together in a most active way, they don't choose to jump on the leather sofa or recliner.

[aaron]

We have two cats, whose claws we try to keep trimmed. They don't sharpen their claws on any of our furniture, occasionally use the carpet, and primarily use their scratching post. That said, you never know when an animal is going to act in a surprising manner, or when something may happen that inspires a pet to damage furniture -- leather, upholstered, and sometimes even solid wood -- so if you have pets you accept some degree of risk.

Where we have had a bit of a problem is that the cats play, chasing each other and jumping, and they have at times scratched leather surfaces while running and jumping. Declawing won't solve that problem because you can get scratches from the rear claws. With some leather furniture, the hide and finish hold up pretty well, and we have some pieces that show no scratches, but with other hides you are far more likely to see a scratch. You can play around with swatches before ordering to see which ones are more resilient against surface scratching, but I don't think that there's another way to know.

If you want to train cats not to go onto specific pieces of furniture, although I haven't tried it, you may be able to get good results by keeping a water pistol handy and... you can figure out the rest.

[Christophor1992]

Hi Pauly,
My wife is really a pet lover and we have six cats (Persian) in my home. None of them used to play on my leather sofa beds which we bought from http://www.coja.com
They are always sit on our leather couch but never tried to sharpen their claws on it. But sometimes they used to scratch on my tee shirt when they sleep with me on bed. Anyway you can refer some tips from wikihow to protect your leather sofas http://www.wikihow.com/Protect-Furniture-from-Cats.