Cats are beautiful animals, but they can be very destructive. If you have outdoor furniture like a bench or chair, your cat may want to dig their claws into and scratch it to make themselves comfortable on it. This article will provide 8 ways how to keep cats off of your outdoor furniture so that you don’t have to constantly scrub away the evidence of their presence!
8 ways to keep your cat off outdoor furniture
No matter how much you love your cat, it is a good idea to keep them off of outdoor furniture. Let’s look at 8 ways how:
- Place some double sided tape on the backs and arms of any chairs or benches outside.
- Sprinkle cayenne pepper on the edges of any bench or chair you want to protect from cats.
- Put aluminum foil on areas where your cat is scratching the wood around your home. While aesthetically this might look weird, cats despise aluminum foil.
- Use motion activated sprinklers so when kitty tries to come near something they don’t like getting squirted in their face. While this is more of an extreme option, it does work well.
- Keep an air horn handy. I suggest only using this sparingly as cats may get scared away by loud noises every time which could cause them to despise you or run away.
- Spray any cats you see with water from a spray bottle to try and scare them away whenever they get near something you don’t want scratched up. However, you should be careful not to hit your cat directly – this can actually make things worse). As you probably already know, cats despise water.
- Make sure that there are plenty of scratching posts around for your pet, indoors and out. This way they won’t need to scratch other items such as chairs outside because there will be something more suitable for them to use. There are plenty of cheap scratching posts you can buy online on amazon.
- If you see your cat trying to jump onto your chair or bench, try squirting them with a spray bottle, but this time with bottles filled with vinegar . Cats despise vinegar even more than water. The only downside is that your cat might smell like vinegar after this.
Why do cats like climbing outdoor furniture?
Cats like climbing outdoor furniture for many reasons, including:
- Cats have a natural urge to scratch things, and the wood on outdoor furniture is very enticing to scratch. This is how cats mark their territory so that other animals know who lives where! When a cat scratches something, they pass their scent along to the surface.
- They might also want to sleep on the top of a bench or chair because it’s nice and soft compared to hard surfaces inside your home.
- Cats are natural hunters and love to climb up high so they can see what is going on around them. The higher cats go, the easier it becomes for them to spot prey which could be birds or other animals that live outside your home.
- If you have a female cat, she might be restless because she is in heat. When cats are in heat, they will climb and scratch random things.
I hope this article has helped provide you with some useful ways to keep your kitty off outdoor furniture. I’m sure any one of these ways will help solve your problem. Hopefully this article can help preserve your outdoor furniture.
If you cat ever scratches up your leather furniture, you should read my article on how to repair cat scratches on leather with olive oil.
