How To Keep Your Cats from Scratching Your Carpet

If you own a cat you’ll know what a much-loved addition to the family they can be. However this doesn’t mean they don’t occasionally have bad habits, just like any other family member! Scratching carpets is one of them and regardless of whether you have a brand new carpet or not, you don’t want to end up with lots of tufted and scratched areas where your cat has tried to sharpen their claws on a regular basis.

So what do you do when you own a cat that starts doing this?

A natural behavior

Firstly it’s best to understand that your cat is not doing this to be malicious. Cats scratch anything they can to sharpen their claws – it’s a natural procedure and they’re not to know it isn’t desired for them to choose your carpet to sharpen their claws on. So as soon as you see them do it, discourage them from doing so. A lot of cat owners try blowing in their cat’s faces to distract them – they don’t like it but it does them no harm. You may even find that by doing this a few times they get the message and find somewhere else to scratch.

Of course you don’t want them going off to your nice new dining room table to start scratching that instead. So buy a good quality scratching post and position it somewhere they can easily find it. If you find they have a desire to scratch one particular carpet in your home, place the scratching post in that same room. As soon as you see your cat trying to dig its claws into your carpet, pick it up and direct it towards the scratching post. Cats are pretty intelligent – they’ll soon get the message.

What if the cat doesn’t like the post?

Choosing a good quality one, as mentioned before, is highly important. If it topples over on your cat as soon as they dig their claws in, they won’t feel inspired to use it. If you can attach some catnip toys to it as well, so much the better. Most cats go silly for catnip!

Another good deterrent is the scent of lemon. Many cat owners have confirmed this works well with carpets. If you can get a carpet spray that smells of lemon you can be pretty sure your cat will not go near it. Just remember to steer your cat towards other areas they are allowed to scratch at, such as the scratching post.

One of the best things to do is simply to be alert to what your cat is doing. Some cats scratch more than others; those that go outside a lot don’t tend to scratch as much indoors as cats who never go outside. But if you keep an eye on your pet and stop them from scratching your carpet while providing deterrents and other more desirable areas to scratch, you may be delighted at the results.

How To Clean Stains Out of Carpet

We’ve all that those frightening moments – you reach out to pick up a glass of wine or a mug of tea and instead of closing your fingers around the glass or handle, you knock it over instead. Before you know it you’ve got a horrible stain all over your carpet.

So what do you do next?

First things first – get up as much as you can as quickly as you can

Grab a roll of absorbent kitchen paper and lay it over the top of the stain to mop up as much as you can. It is also possible to cover it with table salt – it takes up all the moisture and any color too (think red wine!). You can dab it gently to take up more of the spillage but don’t scrub it as you might grind the stain into the carpet rather than removing it. It could also damage the carpet pile.

Have some water to hand too, so you can blot it with some clean water. One tip – make sure whatever you put the water into is 100% clean before using it.

Follow the instructions given when you purchased your carpet

If you still have them, locate the care instructions that came with your carpet. Follow them to the letter and see how the stain fares. Obviously if you had a stain guard solution applied to the carpet you should find the spillage will pool on top rather than soaking in.

Finding a solution for a stain that won’t come out

Don’t worry if you are still left with a stain after you’ve completed the above two steps. There are still plenty of things you can do.

There are two main ways you can go with spot removal. You can either get a shop bought solution to get rid of the stain or you can make your own at home. Vinegar, for example, is known to be a good cleaning agent and it can be used to get rid of some carpet stains too.

The best course of action is to remember that there are different methods for clearing up different stains. For example a glass of wine will require a very different approach to a spillage of olive oil. This is because the first is water based and the second is (obviously) oil based. Google the stain you have and see what the best approach is in that particular situation.

Remember the spot test

One final thing to remember is that you should always test a stain removing solution – whether homemade or otherwise – on a small area of carpet you wouldn’t normally see. This will determine whether or not the color of the carpet will bleed out when treated, or whether it will be noticeable that you have treated it.

As you can see there are plenty of ways to get rid of stains on your carpet, whether they are caused by liquids or anything else. All you need is the right approach.