Cats and blinds

[ExpletiveDelighted]

We took our living room curtains down recently to wash them and were struck by how much bigger the room looks without them, so we were thinking about switching to venetian blinds, which we would leave down most of the time for privacy. However I'm a bit worried about the cats getting tangled up in them and their cords - they love the windowsill when its sunny and can easily get behind the curtains. Any experience or suggestions?

We have cats and blinds.The still sit on the window sill scanning the lay of the land.The only problem we've had was once when a bee got behind the blind and the cat couldn't catch it.You can always leave the blind up on their favourite windows but all of ours are down and open with no problems.

Its the only windowsill they really use (the rest are narrow or not in the sunshine). Summer mornings are the worry, the sun is full on in that room first thing but if we had left the blinds fully shut overnight which we would for privacy I'm envisaging the cats trashing the blinds at 5am to get to their favourite morning sun spot.

Have you considered a frosted window sticker? We had blinds and they got trashed by my cat, ended up with a black streak where he used to sit and hey'd get covered with hair. Tried vacuuming them but it didn't really help. So we got some window stickers that we about 40% frosted to allow the light in but maintain privacy (we lived in an on the street terrace house) and curtains to help keep the heat in.

I would have frosted window stickers but DH is totally against them and he has a point - we have a good view and it would spoil it. Also it would mean putting the curtains back up, which is what we wanted to avoid.

Matt got tangled in the blinds when he was a kitten. We hadn’t had him long so he’d only be four or five months old. Luckily we were only in the next room, heard the commotion and ran in and the poor boy was upside down dangling by one leg, hissing.
Somehow the little plastic loopy bit at the bottom had got wrapped round his paw several times. I managed to untangle him and got bitten for my troubles (but I forgive him because he was frightened). He still goes and looks through the blinds but has never got stuck again.
We have vertical blinds, always get mixed up about Venetian and what they actually are.

We have vertical blinds on the patio doors but took the little plastic joiners off the bottoms when the DCs were crawling age, also made the cords as short as possible. But they wouldn't look right in the living room (Victorian house with sash windows). Venetian are the horizontal slat ones. I think we'll give them a go but make sure the cords are safely out of the way.

We have Venetian blinds in our bedroom and living room. Dcat simply sits on the room side and looks through the slats. Dkitten is more of an (idiot) adventurer though and being smaller is able to climb through the slats to get to the window side. She’s never been harmed or got stuck though. I can’t see her being able to do it for much longer but I’m sure she’ll try!

What about wooden shutters with slats in. That's the latest thing round here. They do look good in Victorian Houses.

Thanks but there are quite a few houses round here with shutters and sorry, I have to say I disagree, I think they look wrong in Victorian houses, in fact I don't like them at all.

I should have said in my OP, we have considered all blind options and it's only going to be Venetian or curtains, I really just wanted to know how other people with cats have got on with Venetians.

I think it depends on your cats. We had Venetian blinds and our big tabby trashed them trying to move them out the way or trying to get through them. We had metal and wooden slats. He bend the metal slats and snapped the wooden ones. Our petite female wouldn't have been able to cause the same amount of damage.

Whatever you do, don't get the cheap metal type. My cat is an arsehole.

My cat isn't very good at blinds. I have the metal ones but our last place had vertical. I caught her the other day sitting in the metal blinds and trying to go through the middle. She also chews them. She also nibbled at the vertical ones and would get tangled. I now have cheap ones due to this. She loves her windows so I don't really mind.

We've never had problems with the vertical blinds as they just hang there, no bottom joining chains, they just push them aside to get behind them. Never tried scratching them. They are fairly petite middle aged females who don't climb much. I was on the point of ordering the blinds when we went to Ikea and saw some paper ones, DD said "imagine what the cats would do to those" and it got me thinking. The ones we are considering are the white wood effect plastic ones, fairly sturdy.

we have horizontal wooden blinds and ours are fine with them. We just had to put the cord things out of reach of the kitten! They push behind them to lie in the sun.

Do not get metal or plastic ones, they will be destroyed :)

Well, just reporting back. We went for the wood effect Venetian blinds in the end, they've been up for about a month and the cats have been fine with them, there is still room for them to sit on the windowsill and they have made no attempts to climb or get through them. They do get a little puzzled if the bottom sash is open but the blinds are down as they like going in and out through the window but no damage so far to either blinds or cats, thanks to all that offered advice.

We had this "problem" many moons ago and solved it by attaching a 6 inch strip of fabric to the bottom of the blind. We would hoist the blind so that the fabric strip still stopped you seeing in and the cat could get to her fave spot without trashing the whole shebang.