Oh goodness "what decisions have I made to accomodate my pets?" Sorry, this forum is not long enough! HA!

Really, I make sure all fabrics in my home are washable, curtains, sofa covers, rugs, etc. The best way to deal with curtains gettig snagged is try to use tight woven fabrics. I personally don't like tight woven fabrics so my curtains catch a few snags, but they are not real noticeable. I keep the curtains tide to one side out of their way and that helps to keep them from using them to climb!! Main thing is I don't pay a lot for my curtains so if and when they ruin them, it's not tragic.

I've velcroed down flower arrangements and other decorative items to keep them from destroying them. I use fabric on my dining chairs that are easily wiped down.

Invest in a nice tall tree with lots of shelves and cubbies. If possible, place it by a front window or a window where there is a lot of action. I feed the birds on my front lawn and the cats sit for hours on the tree watching the birds and praying!! HA!

I only buy and use white cotton bedspreads as they can be washed frequently in hot water. I only use throw rugs because they can be washed frequently also. I know HGTV says I shouldn't, but HGTV doesn't live in my house either with all these animals!!!

I don't use a lot of throw pillows because they only pick up hair! I do find the ones covered in ultra suede are great though and easy to clean. Same for the dog and cat beds. All ultra suede.

Buy a big curio cabinet and admire your glass items from afar. All my crystal and other breakables have to live behind glass. I was brave and lost 2 crystal bowls and then relented and let them win. Into the cabinet everything went. When I have company I pull out a few pieces, but as soon as company leaves, back into the cabinet for safe keeping.

I love a nice tablecloth, but can't use them because they are pulled to the floor. I've tried many different tactics to keep them on the table and nothing works. For a table centerpiece I'm considering covering a cinder block with batting and material. I know they won't be able to move that!!!

The only good thing is one day the cats will get too old to cause so much mischief. I just recently acquired some kittens and have promptly taught them how to live in the yard with the other outside cats. One day, hopefully in my new house I'm buildiing, I'll be able to enjoy my things without fear of them being ruined, broken or other things being done to them by the bad cats. HA!

Hope this helps. If I think of anything else I'll post it.

Wow, I can't get over using velcro to secure flower arrangements. I'm lucky mine usually just smell my flowers, but I can not have any baby's breathe because apparently that is cat candy and they can't resist. Thanks Brutuses you have lots of good ideas.

I will say that when I built my house I thought we wouldn't get cats again and the dog was elderly - well just two and that grew to four. The one thing I wish I had done was to have doors that shut off the living and dining rooms so I could keep them looking nice AND pet free. Oh well, next house.

Sky

One of our kitties is an in-and-out cat. She wants to be in when she is out and when she is out, she wants to be in. She might have Alzheimer's. We put her up to the vanity for water. She drinks, wants down and goes to the next vanity until she has had water from all 3 and then we start all over again until she wants out. She is 20 so I am sure she forgets she has just had water ???? or maybe I am just her slave.

One cat thinks it owns us and never goes outside. It is no longer a kitten so not much trouble there but has issues about getting along with the dog and other cat.

Whew, the dog. That's another case. I have deodorant on every piece of wood in my house to keep her from chewing it. Within 12 hours of becoming ours, she had eaten the 2-month-old wood ledges off our kitchen windows, the shoe molding from the laundry room and the molding from around the bottom of the armoire. Now that it has all been repaired, I have what looks like chabby chic furniture from white deodrant swipes all over every piece of wood. She ate one silk bedskirt off a bed, so no bedskirts on the bed. Please don't tell me to get her toys or bones. She is floating in things to entertain her! We had to have every Oriental rug washed and put away because she thought they were all her personal toilets. So not a single rug on the floor, all in the attic rolled up until she is older. I am sure I could go on but kitties are mild compared to dogs!

Patricia, you think kitties are mild. I could tell you stories that would curl your toes!! I don't have rugs either because one in particular likes to wee on it. I once in a while find wee on the kitchen counter. Is that enough for you? HA! I find little bowls of apple cider vinegar deter the jumping up on the counter though. They hate the smell (so do I).

To get your dog to stop chewing inappropriate things you need to keep him supplied with tons of appropriate things. I talk to people all the time you say "oh he chews this and he chews that and I giveh him toys." Well, toys are not things they should be chewing on anyway.

My Scottie, who passed away this year at the old age of 20 loved to chew. I learned early on that you have to provide chewers with things they like to chew 24/7, not just now and then. When he would even look like he wanted to chew my shoes or remote, I'd simply say no and put his chew in his mouth. Took about a day for him to realize what was his and what was ours. I will tell you the very best thing to buy a dog to chew on. Don't freak and don't faint. It is called different names "bully" "twiizzel stick" "bull stick." All these names are describing one thing, a dried bull penis. OK, you can stop laughing now. I didn't invent them I just learned how much my dogs loved them and I never had to worry about losing furniture to my dogs chewing fetish. I also give mine pig and cow ears. I give them those "teeth cleaner" raw hides you buy at the vet sometimes. Once in a while I give them a greenie too. That's all they get, but they have them available all the time. I will actually give them out when I'm ready to leave the house as a "occupy yourself while I'm gone" treat. If you walk in my house my den is usally littered with a couple of bullies and ears. I raised Brutus since he's 10 weeks old and he has never chewed anything other than his chews and has lived in my house with free run day and night. He loves his chews and wants them all the time and that is the key to keeping them from destoying your stuff. What's great about the bully sticks is that they last a long time, no pun intended!!

Oh I'm glad to know I'm not the only one with a pet who doesn't like carpets. I didn't post to the question about is "bathmats out of style" - but in our house they are because one cat likes to pee on them - so I always have to have it hanging from the shower door.

Oh and I've found hot sauce to be very effective, especially on plants - and probably easier to clean up than deoderant.

Brutuses - what does a bully stick look like when it's partially chewed? Sounds really gross, but I guess the dogs don't care.

Skylar

I use large/huge pine cones over the dirt in my flower pots. (I have also used river rock in the past.) Dissuades my darling kitties from using them as a litter box. We also have craftsman style couches and chairs (wood on 3 sides) to help with the cat hair issue. Every fabric/pillow/etc I buy gets evaluated for hair attraction. The greatest stuff out now is that silky feeling fur that is in most fabric stores. I made a throw out of it and the cat hair just shakes off. Amazing.

I have four cats - the youngest is less than a year old. He has had soft paw covers since he was brought home. He is the only one of my cats that has managed to pull up parts of my carpeting on the stairs. The downstairs is all wood, and none of them really bother anything else.
As of late, this has been much less of a problem because he has stopped trying to take his nail caps off.

I do allow a cat tree in the living room and they love to sit on it and look at the squirrels outside.
{{!gwi}}

Daisy, my DIL has one similar to yours, and their cat just loves it. It is a latchkey kitty from 7 until noon and from 1 until 3. They have a backyard filled with trees and nature, and kitty likes to sit there peering and wishfully dreaming of the bird catches it will make once it is allowed outside. It is very, very cute!

Like one of those old wives tales 'if you spill salt you must throw some over your shoulder' --- same with these.
If I'm even close to running low on my supply I must, must restock.
Can't live without either (pics below) when it comes to my 2 exclusively indoor kitties, 3/4 time spent indoor dog and extremely destructive parrot.

(Go ahead, ask me how I decorate my Christmas tree to keep every single ornament in place throughout the season.
The branches in place? Well, I'm still working on that.*grin*)

QuakeHold and Velcro Dots -- if you have playful or nosey furbabes, can't live without either.

Brutuses!
LOL soooo glad you brought this up as I was askeered to. LOL

We have a Bully Bag!

Years ago we originally used it to hold the families' Pick-Up Sticks game when the original box started falling apart.

Now that we don't play much of the P-U-S (we prefer nickle poker hehehe) the Bully Bag is used to hold our furbabes "Bonesies".
(That's what the whole family calls the furbabes treats and all the critters know that word Ask any of the critters if they want a bonesy and they run to where the Bully Bag is hung.)

Bully Bag has been used for about 10 years now for treats.The bag is darn sturdy and holds a good weeks supply of treats.

skylar, the bully stick is chewed and swallowed and as they chew the end just gets a little ugly. HA! I'm sorry I don't know how to answer. LOL

I've been worrying about this since we started working on this house. Right now there isn't much in the way of finished decorating for our 4 cats to ruin, but eventually we're hoping to actually be done with the work and then what? They wreak havoc with rugs, especially wool kilim rugs, running and sliding into them, rolling around on them, wrapping themselves in them and getting fur all over. Anything left on a table top is on the floor in the morning. Curtains are in jeopardy in the summer because of bugs that buzz around in the window. The cats love to claw at the bugs and up the curtains to catch them. The cats also love to sit on the fireplace mantle and stare out the window, so we don't have anything on the mantle that can get knocked off (it gets a little crowded with 2 or 3 of them up there at one time). And now my poor little girl cat has what looks to be a permanent lower spine injury that has left her incontinent to some extent, so all the furniture she lays on has plastic and towels on it. I often feel like we're living with quadruplet toddlers.

Skypathway,
Have you tried SoftPaws before for your cats? I have a lot of experience with these and they work great. They do a great job of protecting all your upholstery and curtains and they are harmless to cats. One application lasts for well over a month and Soft Paws can be found at Petsmart and Petco as well as many places online.

Here is a link that might be useful: Soft Paws

When we bought this house a yr ago, I made sure the majority of our floors are wood because carpets just get to stained up when they throw-up. Wood makes it so much easier. Sometimes they miss the wood and opt for the area rugs but they are easier to clean than carpet since they are dense. We also a 2 parrots. They are messy with eating

My boy cat Zack is very cosiderate and always lets me know when he vomits. He knows what my job is. Ha. He goes as far as to bite my hair if it happens when I'm sleeping and does not stop until I get up an clean his mess. Very considerate!

I was just thinking today that I need to get some type of throw to cover the ottomans I ordered for 2 new chairs in my FR so they do not get corroded with hair. His highness loves the sleep on them since he knows chairs are a no, no (he does sneek a snooze on a chair or sofa every so often).

Ordered leather looking vinyl on new dining chairs for breakfast nook so I can just wipe the hair off and people will no longer have hairy backsides.

I can't keep fresh flowers on tables. He loves to eat them and you know what happens after that. Hooray for wood floors. So no flowers in easy to get to places.

Samme, my girl cat does nothing but sleep and primp. She is very well behaved.

Have never had any urine issues.

tmbk, I haven't tried Soft Paws although my DD#1 did with her cats. She had the vet put them on and within 15 minutes of getting home her one cat had them all off and the other cat was on her way to chewing hers off too. And my cats are not really destructive with their nails - probably because we are wall to wall scratching posts and mostly leather furniture. I appreciate your suggestiong though and I'm glad to hear it is working for you.

Kim, I'm so sorry about your girl cat, that must be so aggravating.

Thanks everyone for posting, this is interesting.

Skylar

We got 2 puppies in Dec. '05. Yup, 2 puppies that I needed to housebreak during ice storm season here in NH, as well as keeping them out of harm's way during the Christmas season.

Our best idea was to build a fence around our Christmas tree. It didn't turn out to be as tacky as it sounds. The tree is set in the middle window of a 3-window bay. DH built the equivalent of a white picket fence that wrapped around the tree in a semi-circle. It stood about 3 ft. high, had carpeting under the bottom posts to protect the wood floor, and was painted white to match the trim in our home.

It was a lifesaver! Dogs couldn't get in to damage the tree/ornaments/presents and I didn't have to worry as much about their being harmed by igesting anything Christmas-tree related.

People thought it looked charming, and though I wouldn't go that far, it wasn't offensive. We used it again last year, and will haul it out again this season.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention!

We used Bitter Break or Bitter Apple to keep critters from chewing things, although thankfully once Randomkitty got out of the kitten stage she wasn't much on chewing anything except flowers and plants (both real and silk, but at least you can douse silks with Bitter Apple) and Goku just licks, rather than chews. Still, the "lickies" get really irritating! It's completely clear and lasts a very long time, but washes off nicely and IME doesn't stain.

I, too, chose leather and microfiber upholstery so hair could wipe off, and wood floors are wonderful for being able to get the hair up quickly. (We're going to do wood upstairs too, when we can afford to. I hate carpet in general, berber carpet in particular, and cheap berber even more so.) I picked wool area rugs because cat barf cleans up especially well from those, since poor little Random never seemed to do her horking on the nice easy-to-clean vinyl!

Now that we have a little more room in the living and dining rooms, we are going to get a prettier dog bed for Goku. I'm thinking about one of those nice wood-framed ones with a mattress inside instead of the "big pillow" kind, which I never liked the looks of. It's policy that any furkids are allowed on the furniture (they're part of the family, after all) but there are times when they need to go be somewhere else and "go to your bed" is an awfully useful command!

Our boy loved bully sticks (aka macho stix for the big ones)... a little too much. It's the only thing he has ever shown resource-guarding behavior over, we can take his food bowl or even stolen beef bones away more easily. So, no more bully sticks. When we did give them, though, we used the big braided ones so that there was less likelihood that he would chew it right down to a nub and swallow the end. You should supervise them and take the nub away when it's short enough to swallow (3" or so). FWIW our vet recommends against pig's ears for, among other things, their tendency to be rather fattening when the calories could be better spent on more nutritious fare; she recommends American-made compressed-rawhide "bones" (not the knotted kind, and not the sticks) - Asian products are often contaminated with salmonella and other harmful bacteria, heavy metals, pesticides and other nasties that shouldn't be near any living being, much less our beloved pets! As with other chewies, dogs should not be left unattended with them. The safest things to leave with dogs are hard rubber chew-toys like Kongs.

amck, the picket fence around the tree doesn't not at all sound or look tacky. My sister in law did that every year to keep the toddlers away from the tree. Done right, the fence is quite charming as far as I'm concerned.

We haven't had a tree in 20 years. We attempted it the first year we were married and back then only had 3 cats. Well, Angel decided to scale the tree, right up the center and pull the entire thing over. As Christmas approached the tree had less and less ornaments on it. By Christmas it was pretty much bare. We gave up and just decorated outside!!

Are your drapes all the way down to the floor? Perhaps using tiebacks or not floor length would remove the temptation. Don't purchase expensive drapes in case it does happen. I wouldn't recommend Soft Paws. Very unnatural and irritating to cats.

"I look fabulous and am not irritated in the bit"
jackson

Pig ears are famous for giving dogs pancreatitis. If you have never had it, believe me -- you do not want it and would not wish it on your worst enemy. It is the most painful disease known to mankind. So just imagine how your doggie feels.

Oh my gosh, those blue Soft Paws are so funny! I used to put them on Holiday, when she was really tearing up the sofa, but now she no longer does that for some reason. Peeing in the corners must be satisfying her destructive instincts.

I'm sure there are folks reading this thread who would think, "Sheesh! Why would anyone ever own a pet?!"

:)