Cat ruined sofa - would a leather one be better?

[Lollypolly]

OK, so the sofa was partially ruined by a toddler and a bottle of purple nail polish but the cat (7.5 months old, neutered) has opened up two seams on the sofa by using it as a scratching post. He has other scratching posts, which he loves, but seems to like variety.

So my question is, what can I do to stop him scratching so much and would a leather sofa fare better or do cats scratch those too? Never had such a scratchy cat before.....

My cat scratched my old leather sofa and it made it looked terrible. Very obvious little holes you could see the White padding through. Very obvious with black leather.

I think you can get some spray on stuff to deter them, no idea how effective it is though

Mine leaves the leather sofa well alone! Wont even sit on it.

When we got our leather sofas we had three cats who had all scratched the old fabric ones - they have never scratched the leather ones (except by accident, jumping on/off.

We have leather sofas in our front lounge and neither of my cats has ever scratched them - aren't too wild about sitting on them either for that matter. The fabric covered sofas in the back lounge have been completely shredded though.

A friend of my mum's has 3 very scratchy cats and uses some double-sided tape thing called sticky paws on her sofa, which I believe has worked quite well to deter her trio of vandals.

Thanks everyone.

Piggles, we have used the double sided cat tape up and along the arms of the sofa. It worked really well except that he started scratching the cushions and back of the sofa. It got to the point where we were practically wrapping the whole thing in tape ... and he still found somewhere to scratch

My cat won't touch the leather sofa. We have those old fashioned prickly brownish door mats, and she scratches those. I sprayed feliway on all the things she's allowed to scratch. Apparently cats hate the smell of oranges. You could get orange peel and rub the pith on the sofa. This would rub the orange oil on the sofa (probably best if your sofa is a dark colour). it might leave a bit of a mark, but will look better that scratches!

Risky. My friends cat ruined her leather sofa the first day she had it!

Our de-clawed cat jumped on dh's expensive leather recliner and slipped, her back claws made noticeable scratches on the leather.