Would aromatic scents/essential oils keep cats away from rugs/furniture?

[notamumbutfan]

We adopted 2 old cats; they are darlings but scratch rugs, furniture, whatever they can lay their darling little paws on.
I found loads of companies selling essential oils; can I mix them with water and spray areas/furniture? would it stain the fabrics? they are not silk - well, most are not.
thanks for any help. see pix of the darlings and furniture

Do you have scratching posts, cat trees, horizontal scratchers, etc that you can deflect attention onto?

dementedpixie - oh, yes dementedpixie - they got the lot! spoiled rotten as we are old and have no kids of our own; - i now covered the scratching post/pad with cat-nip - good stuff, they now use it sometimes, but if I don't watch they'll still prefer the carpets; I always had cats - most rescued, but never this problem.
I love them very much - just want to keep them off the good stuff.
thanks

That's a bit small. We have a tall one they can reach to their full stretched height. We're also have horizontal ones to distract from scratching the carpet. The cat tree also has scratching posts on it

My cats posing on one of the horizontal scratchers and the tall post

And put the scratching things in the room near the furniture they are interested in

Beautiful cats! I say try much bigger scratching posts and place them near the furniture they scratch (sorry I know this can be unsightly!)

pearldeodorant = wow, gorgeous little furries! - and that is a big one! - joke apart, yes, that is a great idea, thanks!

dementedpixie = sorrrrrrrrry meant to reply to you about the gorgeous ones! I am still only getting the hang of this web-site - the only social media am on. thank you all

Zooplus is good for reasonably priced cat equipment

dementedpixie = you are right, excellent stuff on "zooplus" - never looked before as they do go out as well, climb trees etc... we live in the country. million thanks!

A lot of essential oils are toxic to cats so I would be careful of using them.

much better than essential oils which most are toxic to cats what i do is put pure lemon juice in water in a spray bottle and give the places i dont want my cats scratching a spritz as lemon juice wont harm them and cats are not keen on citrus smells

isseywithcats - thank you, that is brilliant as i always use lemon a lot for cleaning as well - thank you all for the tips - things are getting better as they go out more now that we have a cat flap as well. (bought a new backdoor for the little hooligans!) thank you all