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Cats scratching your furniture is a natural consequence of owning cats that most owners would like to avoid. Cats are stubborn and persistent and don’t honestly care about what you want, especially when what you want conflicts with what they want.
Vinegar is an excellent natural cat repellent that can be used to teach your cats where they should and shouldn’t be spending their time. You can use vinegar, soap, and water to make a homemade cat-repellent spray. Here’s how!
The 4 Steps to Keep Your Cat Off Furniture With Vinegar
1. Gather Your Ingredients
- Vinegar (white or apple cider)
- Hand soap
- Water
You can use either white or apple cider vinegar for this cat repellent. You might want to try both and see which works better for you and your cats. The smell of the vinegar will deter the cats from scratching, chewing, and marking surfaces. The soap will make it friendly and gentle on the surfaces you spray it on and keep them from smelling like vinegar to the humans in the house.
Any water will work. Purified, distilled, or even plain old tap water will not change the effectiveness of the spray. It helps if you use gentle hand soap with a clear formula. Otherwise, the coloring might bleed onto fabrics or surfaces.
You might wonder if the soap neutralizes the smell for the cats, and it does not. Cats have 200 million scent receptors in their noses. Humans only have 5 million; you can’t smell everything your cat can.
2. Mix Your Ingredients
You’ll want to start by pouring one part vinegar and one part water into your spray bottle and mixing thoroughly. Once they’re well combined, it’s time to add the soap! The whole mixture is equal parts of all three ingredients.
Shake the bottle hard for a while to ensure that the soap combines well with the water and vinegar; otherwise, you might be able to smell the vinegar after you spray the surfaces.
3. Treat Your Areas
You can either spray the areas with a spray bottle or pour the mixture on a cloth and wipe it on a surface. To maintain the repellant’s effectiveness, you’ll want to spray and reapply it roughly once a week.
This mixture can be used indoors and outdoors, but its effectiveness may diminish as the smell is not as strong as that of commercial cat repellents for outdoor use. If you’re trying to keep cats off your property, this mixture may not be strong enough to keep them away.
4. Tweak Your Mixture
You can change the strength of the mixture by reducing the amount of water in it. A little bit of water will make it easier to spray, but too much will dilute it. If you find the mixture too potent for you or your cats, you can increase the amount of water in the mix to bring down the strength while retaining the repellant effect.
Other Options for Keeping Cats Off Furniture
There are other options for keeping cats off counters and furniture. Here are a few alternatives you can use to help your cats find a more suitable place to nap and preen their claws.
Buy Your Kitty Some Cat Furniture
From beds to trees and scratching posts, there’s no shortage of attractive furniture made with cats in mind! Cat furniture is made with feline comfort in mind and might convince your cat that there are other places to sleep besides your favorite chair.
Scratching posts are made to feel good and satisfying for cats to scratch, and finding a good one will attract your cats to the post rather than the couch. If you’re having trouble with cats scratching your furniture, ensure there are enough appropriate places for them to scratch.
The Hepper Hi-Lo Cat Scratcher features a modern and clever design that offers cats an appealing place to scratch – and a way to keep them from scratching all the things they shouldn't. Unlike most cat toys (where your cat probably just prefers the cardboard box they came in), cat's flock to this design ... maybe it's because there's cardboard in it!
- Premium Materials - Hepper's cardboard scratcher is made with dense, B-flute cardboard, and a metal...
- High, Low and Lower - A single cat scratch pad won't keep your cat engaged. 3 unique positions keeps...
- Activates Muscles - The Hi Lo isn't just a cat nail file to stop the chief cat couch scratcher. The...
With its 3-position setup, textured cardboard, and sturdy frame, it encourages their natural scratching behavior, steering them away from clawing at items like furniture, walls, carpets, curtains, and people. The Hi-Lo is a reliable solution to safeguard your home and create a more enjoyable environment for your cat, all while looking modern and stylish.
At PangoVet, we've admired Hepper for many years, and decided to take a controlling ownership interest so that we could benefit from the outstanding designs of this cool cat company!
Another thing to remember is that cats enjoy sitting in high places to survey their kingdoms. The back of your sofa or chair may seem like a perfect perch for them to take up in their patrol. If you’re having trouble with your cats getting up on the backs of your furniture, providing them with cat trees might reduce their time on the backs of your furniture.
Conclusion
While vinegar is a fantastic natural cat repellant, it’s essential to give your cats alternatives to your furniture so that they’ll have a comfortable and appropriate place to rest and scratch. If you provide alternatives, you may be able to stop treating your furniture with vinegar altogether! Regardless of how you achieve harmony with your cats, we hope you can find the perfect solution for you and your cats!
Featured Image Credit: RJ22, Shutterstock
