Sound-proofing carpet underlay

[NoviceKnitter]

So, we live in a first floor flat, and - when heard we were having a baby - neighbour asked us if we'd soundproof flat! To cut long story short, answer is no, but as need to re-carpet, willing to go for a more sound proof underlay than bog standard, without going the whole very expensive hog.

Anyone any experience of this? Most annoying things seems to be that we'd have to get the underlay from a different place to the carpet which turns fitting into more of a palaver.

Any thoughts/recommendations welcome.

Oh, and is it as stupid as people say it is to buy a lovely wool loop carpet when there's a cat in the house?

Can't advise on underlay I'm afraid, but please DON'T buy the lovely loopy carpet if you have cats, they do seem to take great satisfaction from pulling them. We had to compromise on our carpet because of this as it wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes!

What did you get in the end? I'm having real carpet commitment phobia issues...

I think ours is a 'cut loop pile' which is a bit more durable but not totally cat proof. We only have carpet upstairs and don't let the cats up there anymore since DS was born - as one of them kept sleeping in the moses basket (yuk) and the other kept puking on the new carpet in the early hours of the morning (double yuk).

Oh, I have just done a search for carpet textures and am not sure whether that is what we have after all looking at some of the photos .

It is a sort of textured berber type carpet anyway if that helps!

I actually asked the carpet seller man which would be suitable with cats in the house and he advised me not to buy the type we had originally chosen.

Thanks Washer. I'm just going to have to bite the bullet. Been fantastising about training cat with aversion therapy so I can have carpet I really want. As for the soundproofing - whole other can of worms. This is one job that keeps plummeting to bottom of pile...