The cat is coming from inside the couch.

April 15, 2019 9:08 PM

My little monsters - always innovating in the art of destroying our precious few pieces of furniture - have recently dug a hole through the bottom of the couch and enjoy climbing inside the guts to make a private crazytime leisure fort. I've temporarily covered the hole(s) with aluminum foil, but ... what fabric can I replace it with that will be tougher and more resistant to their future couch-fort spelunking?
posted by mykescipark to Home & Garden (8 answers total)

Can you clarify what they've tunneled through? Is it just tack cloth on the underside of the springs of the couch or is it actual couch infrastructure?
posted by arnicae at 9:19 PM on April 15, 2019

Yeah, just tack cloth, or that gauzy black polypropylene stuff. Sorry, I realized after I posted that I wasn't clear.
posted by mykescipark at 9:30 PM on April 15, 2019

Ballistic nylon. Its the same stuff that heavy duty backpacks are made from.
posted by tipsyBumblebee at 9:38 PM on April 15, 2019

Canvas also works. My cats did this with box springs. We staple-gunned some sail weight canvas, which we had handy, and that has worked for a couple of years.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:41 PM on April 15, 2019

My son & his girlfriend stapled window screening across the bottom of their couch to solve this problem. (The pet-sturdy kind.) It's worked for several months so far.
posted by stormyteal at 3:34 AM on April 16, 2019

We had the same problem with our couch. I can anti-rec fleece, which my partner and I thought would be thick enough to discourage tiny claws. This is incorrect. They carefully worked at the fleece around the staples until they had made themselves a new hole. Cats are very innovative.
posted by possibilityleft at 7:12 AM on April 16, 2019

We applied Gorilla tape to the existing tack cloth and taped up the holes. The teenage house panther that lives with us has yet to tear a hole in that.
posted by teleri025 at 10:34 AM on April 16, 2019

My own little monsters did this to my new sofa (disclaimer: it's a €400 sofa, not a fancy one) which had the base covered with some gauzy black stuff. I let them snooze in their secret hammock-cave for a few months until they managed to pull the cloth free of the staples in a few places, then I just took scissors and cut it all off. It didn't seem to serve any actual purpose, and it has not changed the sofa, other than 100% less worry that somehow the couch will collapse while I'm sitting on it and squish a kitty.
posted by sldownard at 11:17 AM on April 16, 2019