Repairing Cat Scratched Sofa

When we bought our sofa, we were newly married and had no pets. We didn't think that we were going to have cats soon and that they would just loooveee our new textured fabric sofa. We tried training our darling cats to stop using it as their oversized scratching posts. We bought them several scratching posts, made scratching pads out of old carpets, yelling, clapping loudly, squirted them with lemony water, sprayed the lounge with vinegar, covered the edges with aluminium foil etc. You get the picture. Nothing really worked if we weren't on guard.



After a while it got very tiring. As I lay in bed falling asleep at night, I could hear them waking up and digging their claws into my once beautiful sofa. It got so embarassing I had to trim the loose threads on it before company came over!


When I had my colleagues over for Eid, Rosemary shared with me how she fixed up her own cat scratched sofa. She told me about covering the edges with vinyl and tacking them into the timber frame. So simple! I went to Spotlight and bought half a metre of black vinyl. Then to Bunnings and bought 2 packets of black upholstery tacks. Total cost is less than $20. I took about an hour to cut the pieces and to tack them into place.


And I am absolutely over the moon with the results! The vinyl pieces don't look that out of place and the sofa looks almost new. The cats don't like the vinyl and have left the sofa alone. They are using their scatching post again. SUCCESS!




Now I just have to figure out how to stop Ifa from scatching the bedroom door and meowing her heart out when she demands breakfast at 5.30am!