First time user, long time cat lover.
I must admit I feel odd talking about my cats online...but desperation is the mother of invention, or father possibly...besides the point.

NYC, upper west side...2 people trying to make their home more presentable, mature and nice...of course essential items for this are a couch and a rug of some sort, maybe a few other niceties. We have 2 cats. Their bad ass...best cats ever. So we brave Macy's on black Friday to get a couch...I swear we had some lose talk about absolutely not getting a leather sofa...smarter to get some kind of micro-fiber....but of course we get an awesome brown leather double recliner sofa...Italian. I swear a voice(small voice) was saying the whole time...do not do this....nooo, i said...it will be ok, well figure it out. My first sofa..sweet.
On our way out we see an awesome rug 70% off. 100% Indian wool, looks like the sun just washed over it, i mean awesome beautiful. Even at 70% it was alot of money.
Got the rug yesterday. Oh the cats f***ing love it...rolling on it, mesmerized...and all of my ALARM bells go off..
Start looking online for anti-scratch spray, not finding much that's looks promising or reliable. Found Pet Talk via post...totally random...sofa comes in 3 days...were screwed ! Thats my conclusion ! We are going to eat that $$$. We would never in a billion years rip there claws out. We dont even cut there claws...they need them. Weve scratching post everywhere , a deck, the cosmic catnip scratching cardboard box...but cats being cats...they just do their thing...hunting, playing, crazy cat journeys and adventures, their worse than 2 kids. Throw in a laser light dot and the fact that were busy and cant always be here...i don't know about you, but when the cats away the mice will play...sometimes they cant wait for us to leave...they get that damn look in their eye...cat nip doesn't work to get them to stay away from stuff...yeah they eat it and scratch it on the post, but now their looped and feeling fine so there's a 50/50 chance that they'll either just plop down and lick themselves silly till they pass out OR they'll play the crazy chase game...
Long story short...already saw a thread or two that I had to snip out of the rug. Fearing the inevitable. Seeking divine intervention. Nice leather sofa comes next week. Cats are Cats. They have sharp claws. We've seen them kill a pigeon. Our sofa when its comes will look like adventure mountain to them. The awesome rug we love only helps them go faster...I've done the math...Time under tension under load. If the the normal life span of a couch and a rug were, say ten years, then we have sentenced ours to an early death!

OccamsPhazer