Can I get a cat with looped carpets?

[Anothernamechange3]

Hi, does anyone have experience of cats and looped carpets please? We’ve found a lovely 5yr old Birman who needs a new home, but we have looped pile carpets throughout the house (except downstairs kitchen and hallway). I will ask the owner who is rehoming re the cat’s behaviour but I wondered if it’s a definite no no or depends on the cat? I don’t want to bring her to live somewhere she could hurt her claws or damage our carpet. Can it work? Many thanks in advance

It's luck of the draw. My cats have rarely scratched my carpets. But the leather sofa gets it from one of them. I've never caught the other scratching any thing. They have a scratch post that they use.

And you'll be so besotted by your cat. That you won't care.

Is that a special offer? 🤔

Depends on the cat. 6 cats out of 7 have never touched the carpets. 1 cat uses every square inch of every carpet, looped or not, like a scratching post and has wrecked the lot. Funnily enough naughty cat is a Birman.

It doesn’t matter what you have, we all have houses that are ever so slightly fucked.

Someone once said to me that you can have nice carpets, or a cat, but not both.. I don't think that's necessarily true. My cat has destroyed one patch of carpet at the bottom of the stairs, but otherwise tends to leave the carpets alone. As with a pp, our leather sofa has taken a bit of abuse from her though!

Mine have certain areas they scratch. They seem to like corners.

The main area of our lounge carpet is also damaged from them stretching out while they lie on their sides and sort of catch their claws on the carpet - that isn’t intentional scratching it’s just them having a good stretch but the corners are intentional (although not being done to annoy me I know!).

I do love my cats but I wish they wouldn’t do this. We will definitely get hard flooring at least in the lounge the next time we replace the flooring.

Our sofas are ruined too.

I really think you need to be prepared for some level of damage when you have cats, regardless of what the current owner tells you.

I've had five cats over the years and only two have ever shown any interest in the carpets, but they've all scratched something they shouldn't - door frames, paintwork, furniture, the fabric sofa and clothing to name a few.

They've all had access to scratching posts and toys but apparently nothing beats their human slaves' belongings

One of mine likes walls and loo roll, another likes carpets - we have two holes thanks to him.

The other murdered the back a particular sofa, but never touched any other furniture.

It's just luck of the draw.

Cats don’t hurt their claws on carpets but they do usually love clawing them. It’s how they tell other cats that this is their territory. You and I have a door number at ur threshold, but a cat will instead have a scratched carpet to show “someone with big claws lives here, keep out!”

If told off for this, the cat usually gets anxious and tries to solve that by… Marking its territory even more.

We’ve swapped our carpet for laminate now 😬

Yep😆
I currently have two massive scratching posts plus a huge cat tree with more scratching posts, they still like to have a go at the carpet by the doors, sorry😬

If you are worried about your carpet, don't get a cat.

I think you usually get cats with fur.

However, when I'm not being a sarky twat, they usually get the hang of keeping their claws sheathed so they don't get caught.

Clawing the carpet though, there's no guarantee one way or the other about that. One of mine does it to the bog standard landing carpet in one particular spot, but never touches anywhere else, the other prefers the wooden table leg that he's trying to shave into a matchstick, both completely ignore the seagrass stairs carpet, despite it being exactly the same colour and texture to their scratching post cover.

The only experience I have of this is our old Siamese. As he got older he couldn't retract his claws fully, and they used to get hooked in the carpet - basically velcroing him to the spot! He'd then wail pitifully until one of us went to unhook him. We tried to keep that particular room shut.

I have short pile carpet but a very shaggy rug. The rug doesn't phase my cat at all, but he is 4 now. As a kitten he scratched everything. He stopped that at about 1 years old.

Our current cats aren't interested in carpets at all, but utterly destroy cardboard boxes, furniture and oddly door frames.

Our previous cats only wanted to destroy carpets, particularly stairs. No matter how many expensive scratching posts sprayed with catnip and rubbed with tuna we gave them!

Our cats don't scratch our carpets other than the bottom steps of the stairs. They do however scratch our sofas and we have two who are sick often because they are long haired. For some reason they are always sick on our lovely 100% wool grey loop carpet in our bedroom and it's nearly ruined it! I can't ever get the stains out properly as you can only use a few things on pure wool and can't scrub!

I only have looped carpet in the bedroom, so the cat likes to wake me up at 3am by very noisily clawing at it until I swipe a pillow in his direction! Definitely won't have looped carpet again!!

Mine do r scratch the carpet unless they get shut out of a room they want to be in. They ignored their scratching post but I found these flat scratching boxes that they lie on and they love them.

Yep - my cat will start coughing up on the laminate floor, and then EVERYTIME puke on the wool rug!
Polypropylene is the way to go I think as it can be bleached.

Mine hasn't scratched anything in my house but he has got stuck in things (the radiator grille, he stretched and got his claw stuck in the window lock too)
He just gets stuck and wails until I rescue him but no carpet destroying, and one of my carpets has loops. I do keep his claws trimmed but he can't bite them himself as he's only got one tooth he's basically a teddy bear

My cats are fine with carpets but can't be trusted near doors or bedposts 🤷‍♀️

@SheldontheWonderSchlong we've got some lovely cosy man made stuff in the living room that's so much more practical for kids and pets. No idea what I was thinking with the bedrooms probably just that it looked nice! Doesn't look so nice anymore covered in stains 😢🙄

Cats tend to either prefer scratching things flat on the floor (in which case your carpets are in danger, but the rectangular, corrugated cardboard scratchers you can put on the floor might be more appealing), or something up high in front of them, hence why lots go for sofa arms or doorframes instead. Maybe see which this cat tends to prefer.

Realistically though, there's always going to be a chance any cat will cause damage to your home. It really doesn't feel like such a big deal when you're bonded to the cat though.

I read somewhere that cats are either vertical or horizontal scratchers. Mine is definitely a horizontal scratcher - ignored the lovely scratching post but loves the coir doormats. And occasionally the (deliberately non loop) carpets. Sigh. She would have a ball with loop carpets I suspect.

You could ask what the Birman likes to scratch now?