Help Me Keep My Cat Off The Furniture NOW! [Cat Care Guide]

Hey there! If you’re like me then the thought of your cat’s naked bum-bum on your couch is probably one of the grossest things in life!

Ok, maybe not that bad, but it was something to get used to and for the longest time I tried to figure out how to keep my cat off the furniture. I mean, they don’t wipe their stinker when they poop!

Ok, on a serious note though, let’s talk about cats, their habits and what you can do to keep their paws happily off your furniture!

Why Do Cats Like To Get On Your Furniture?

When a problem like this occurs, I want you to get in the habit of thinking about your ‘whole cat’. Ask yourself this simple question:

• What behavior is leading my cat to abc.

So in this case, ask yourself and the universe, calmly after a long deep draw of oxygenated air,

What behavio(u)r is leading my cat to jump on my furniture?

The reason I’m telling you to do this is because cats are very instinct driven. They’re not particularly trainable in the same sense as dogs are yet if you take the approach of figuring out the instinct you can manage things a lot better.

What Behaviors Are Leading My Cat To Jump On My Furniture?

Cats, by nature, are hunt driven. Everything from their actions, habits and build literally revolve around hunting prey.

Whether its a necessity or not is irrelevant much like it is if there is or is not actual prey to hunt. Your cat still wants to.

So what does this mean? It means that your cat wants the upper hand. It feels comfortable:

• on the perimeter of the room
• off the ground
• out of site
• out of mind
• comfortable
• with the upper hand

Sounds familiar? Pretty much all of these cat comforts it can find easily atop your furniture like couches, TV stands, and stair railings to name a few.

The easy fix to keep your cat off the furniture is to give them a better place to sit where they feel safer and more secure than your furniture provides them. Just opened up a box of worms?

Keep reading because the fix may not be as difficult as you think. 🙂

Ways To Keep My Cat Off The Furniture

The problem is that your cat wants to be up high, off the ground, ALL THE TIME. I want you to take a minute to observe your cat.

Take note of things like:

• when it is usually on the furniture
  • Is it there all day or just in the evenings?
• how it uses the furniture
  • Does it sleep or eat there? etc.
• how it travels over the furniture
  • Does it hop over it to another location or does it stand up and look around?
• do not include furniture scratching
  • This is also a cat instinct but different behavior, however, the solution I give you will help you get control of this as well

You’ll likely find that even when it’s moving from one place to the other, it will prefer to be off the ground especially if it’s hungry.

Why especially when it’s hungry?

Well, think about what we talked about earlier about cats being hunt driven. When they’re hungry, they’re in hunting mode so that means they’re even more inclined to stick to the perimeter of the room instead of dashing on the ground as a shortcut.

Ways To Keep Your Cat Off The Furniture

Now that you know why your cat is on your furniture we can move forward with finding actionable steps to keep them off the furniture.

The master plan of action you need to take is to provide your cat with alternative highways around the perimeter of all rooms in your home. We’ll call this new pathway the ‘cat highway system’.

Your cat highway system needs to provide your cat with:

• a vantage point of the ENTIRE room
• safety from threats like dogs, small children and even pesty visitors
• a safe pathway from one place to the other without having to be on the floor
•  ie. a path from the litter box to its food bowl without being on the ground for too long
• a comfortable place to rest that’s off the ground

What You Shouldn’t Do To Keep Your Cats Off Your Furniture

We’re just about ready to create our action plan but before we get into what you need to do, I want to talk about things that you should NEVER do to you cat in this situation.

DO NOT DECLAW YOUR CAT! Declawing is painful and puts your cat in permanent pain for the rest of its life. This is one of the worst things that is still legal in some states to do to cats.

It absolutely grinds my gears when people complain about their cats being ‘mean’ and after upon further discussion find out that their cat is declawed. NO NO NO, it’s not the cat who is mean. The cat is in permaPAIN!

I don’t want to say the cat owner is mean because sometimes we assume (and rightfully so) that since you can have it done at the vet that it has to be safe. I know that this is the case for me but thankfully I found out in time before I harmed my cat and I’m hoping that I can stop you from making this big mistake also.

Always do your due diligence before getting any procedure done at the vet or even for yourself.

Next up, don’t yell or cuss at your cat. For one, that’s just transferring negative energy to your cat.

Just as you will get negative when put in a negative environment, so will your cat. You might notice it becomes more aggressive when you do this but it is coming from the way you communicate with it.

Also, do not hit your cat. Violence is not the answer and your cat will respond to this aggressively as well.

Do not get rid of your cat. Would you abandon your kid because he’s a little out of control? Even still, would you like to be abandoned because you’re confused about what the problem is when you’re just doing what you do best?

The time to ‘not have a cat’ is before you got the cat in the first place. Your cat will feel just as abandoned if you give him/her up so please, just calm down and don’t do it T_T

I know that sounds a little harsh but I don’t want you to feel bad. I want you to move forward in progression.

Hey, I was literally in the same boat and I probably still have TONS more to learn about cats. I mean, I was going to declaw my cat at one time before I was schooled and educated properly.

This isn’t a bash, its growth and I hope that you realize the same thing too. Sometimes what we really need to hear isn’t what we really want to accept.

That’s ok, we’re human but I don’t want you to mope. Take proper action going forward 🙂

What To Use To Keep Your Cat Off The Ground!

Few, FINALLY! Planning takes up so much time.

I know but it is totally worth it to find a REAL solution that is safe for all parties and understanding why you are doing what you’re doing is important or things will probably just stay the same.

In order to accomplish our game plan, you will need to use cat trees. Cat trees come in many varieties, designs, and colors.

There are two main types of cat trees:

1. wall mounted
2. free-standing

Wall mounted cat trees are literally shelves specifically designed with your cat’s needs in mind. They are not the same as a shelf that you buy from a hardware store or somewhere like that.

They have comfortable materials that your cat will love to feel and scratch which is what makes them a more long-term solution.

Freestanding cat trees are the type most of us are familiar with. They are the towers that you see at most pet stores in the cat section.

They also have scratching, laying, jumping and climbing areas for your cat.

The Best Cat Trees To Keep Your Cat Off The Furniture

Even though free-standing cat trees are the most popular they fall short of caring for your ‘whole cat’. Remember the cat highway system we talked about earlier. Don’t take it for granted, this is a big part of cat culture.

The best cat trees to use are actually wall mounted ones. Not only do they provide your cat with their needs but you also save a lot of space.

The best wall-mounted cat trees have stations where you can keep their food and water bowls off the ground and out of reach of your dogs if you have them. (Because for w/e reason the dogs like the cat food better. Grrr * shakes angry fist * lol)

Apart from the main body of the cat tree, you will also put up other cat climbing shelves around the perimeter of the room, especially where the furniture is located that your cat loves to be on.

If you want to, you can always add some free-standing cat trees to connect the wall sections together. It will also help to add more variety for them as well.

I hope this information was helpful. If you want to see my #1 recommendation for wall mounted cat trees, you can click the button at the bottom of the page.

If you have any questions, comments or anything additional to add, please leave them in the comments box below. See you next time and all the best moving forward with catifying your space! 😉