If you're a cat owner who has just moved into a new house and you now need to furnish and decorate your new home, you should keep the following tips in mind.
1. Opt for leather sofas and armchairs
If possible, you should buy leather sofas and armchairs for your new home. There are several reasons why this type of furniture is a good choice if you're a cat owner. Firstly, leather is far less absorbent than other types of upholstery fabric (such as velvet, cotton or polyester).
This means that if your cat accidentally urinates on your leather sofa or if their salvia drips onto it, these fluids will not be immediately and fully absorbed by the upholstery. This will give you time to remove these substances before they seep into the sofa or armchair and make it permanently malodorous and unsanitary. The actual process of cleaning a sofa or armchair that has been soiled by your cat will also be a lot faster and easier if it is upholstered in leather, as you can simply wipe it off the surface of the fabric rather than having to repeatedly blot the soiled area in order to extract the fluid that has been absorbed by the upholstery fibres.
Secondly, leather is a far more durable fabric than cotton, velvet or other common materials used to upholster furniture. This is an important quality if you have a cat, as these animals love to dig their claws into upholstered items. As such, if you choose a sofa that is covered in a less robust fabric, it is very likely that sections of it will end up threadbare and badly shredded by your pet.
2. Choose hard flooring materials instead of carpets
Generally speaking, hard flooring materials (such as laminate, tile and timber) are more suitable than carpeting for households that have pet cats. There are many reasons for this. The first is that, like leather, hard floor materials are far less absorbent than carpet materials. As such, if your cat has the occasional bout of incontinence, it will be easier to clean up the mess, and it will be less likely to leave behind a permanent stain or odour.
Secondly, if you opt for carpeting, the fur that your pet sheds throughout the course of each day, and the tiny pebbles of cat litter that they track around your home on their paws after each use of their litter box, will end up getting tangled into the carpet fibres. This will make this debris very hard to remove, even if you run a very powerful hoover across the affected areas of the carpet.
Conversely, if you fit hard flooring materials, any fur or cat litter that your pet transfers to these surfaces will be easy to remove with either a sweeping brush or a hoover. For more information and tips, click this link!
