Sofa fabric that cats won't scratch??

[WindUpBird]

Current sofas are very old and have been ripped to shreds (in places) by cats. Would like to order new sofas but hesitant to spend £££ if cats are going to ruin them...

In your experience, is there any fabric which cats are not so keen to scratch?? Velvet??

My cats haven't bothered scratching the sofa, but I do have quite a few scratching things around for them - two bed towers covered in sisal and a cat tree with sisal poles.

I just have a bog standard ikea sofa.

There is no such thing. Any manufacturer that can come up with something will make a fortune.

Thanks, yeah, I do have a scratching post which they like to use as well as the sofas. They’re annoying!

Sad news! I really hoped someone would tell me the perfect fabric!

We've had all sorts of fabrics over the years & the cats have scratched them all

I wish I knew, we’re in the same position.

tell the cats the new sofa is all theirs and they will not look at it ever again

There must be a market for sofas with removable/replaceable/sacrificial wraps around the edges

I disagree - the answer is velvet! We had a woven ikea sofa that my two absolutely destroyed the arm rests of. Bought the Joules velvet sofas from DFS and neither of them have scratched it. Have had the sofa for 2 years now and it's perfect! Get a velvet one

Velvet.

I've just bought a clear protective thing to wrap around the corners of the sofa.. hoping it works!

Yep velvet here too. Went through two linen sofas and an armchair that were totally destroyed. They don’t touch the velvet.

Ooh, I’m loving all the velvet recommendations, thank you!
@purplesequins yes, that trick might work
@PickledWilly - would you recommend that Joules sofa in general?? Comfortwise & general wear and tear? I looked at John Lewis ones today but they seemed v expensive!

I bought a velvet sofa, two cats and a year on no pulls or scratches.

@WindUpBird it's so good! Seriously comfortable. We got the large sofa with chairs and the cuddle chair and we love them. The only negative is that we got navy velvet and dust really does show! Looks as good as new if wiped over with one of those sticky clothes rollers once a week

Maybe we are lucky our sofas have never been scratched! I don't know about sofa fabrics but in addition to scratching posts you can buy scratching mats you can have them on the floor or hanging on a wall and from what I have read about them over the past couple of years they really help. I just never bought one because our cats scratching post and box have been sufficient so far!

@fantasmasgoria1 I’ll investigate the scratch mats, thank you.

@PickledWilly that’s really helpful, thank you! I’ve now ordered a few Joules velvet fabric samples & will hopefully find a DFS near me with the right sofas to try out!

FWIW I have a corduroy sofa (old IKEA) which none of my five cats scratched, but they have torn the other sofas to shreds.

I had two cats who never scratched the sofas, then got two more who have shredded my sofa covers. We're not even thinking about getting new sofas because I think they would just be shredded. It's actually lit me off getting cats again (we're 15 years away from that, but still...)

My Bengal never scratched till we got velvet. My rescue prefers horizontal scratching but made an exception for velvet.

It’s a duresta so both had lifetime bans from the lounge.

Microfibre apparently.

My boyfriend has 3 cats and they scratch everything but haven't touched a sofa passed on by his parents (who also have cats).

It does seem to attract the hair though and needs going over with a mitten thing regularly.

Mine does not scratch my Habitat sofa. It's a tightly woven Italian (some kind of synthetic) fabric and seems to withstand claws (when he walks on it) quite well. I don't think it's appealing to scratch because it's so tightly woven so their claws would get caught in it, defeating the point. I would not get a natural fibre.

My Ikea footstool has not fared so well, he doesn't scratch it but his claws catch in it, so it looks tatty.

My cat uses his scratching post but has taken to doing an attention seeking scratch of the sofa afterwards. Previous cats didn't scratch. It's just something I have to put up with when I see his little smoochy face.

I got a velvety type one. Not the typical velvet, it's incredibly smooth. It might not even be velvet, but it's the closest I can come to when feeling the material. Actually, it probably isn't velvet 😂 but it's super soft to touch and it's just plain smooth.
Apparently it's not as enticing as the other materials since there's no clicky feel for their nails.

Or get a dog and teach them to not let the cats do it. My dogs will nudge my cats off if they even try.

Now what I need are cat scratching proof carpets.

Jackson Galaxy always says that when you say no to a cat you should always say yes.

So we have clear plastic panels pinned to the side of our sofa the cats were scratching the most (that's the "no"). And right in front of it is a scratching post (that's the "yes").

It works pretty well, they just scratch the post instead of the sofa or carpet.