Our New Interior Define Sofa VS. The Cat (A Four Month Review)

Do you remember that we got a new sofa for our living room in June? This velvet sofa from Interior Define (not sponsored) was the most expensive piece of furniture I had ever purchased, and I decided to go for it because I was tired of purchasing one cheap sofa after another. Since Matt and I got married 20 years ago, all we’ve had are cheap or secondhand sofas. I wanted something new. I wanted something that I didn’t have to upholster myself. I wanted something that was of quality. And most importantly, I wanted something that our cat couldn’t destroy with her claws.

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After searching high and low, ordering loads of fabric samples from various places, and reading reviews, I finally decided on the James 2-seat sofa from Interior Define. I ordered it in the Galaxy Performance Velvet fabric, which was one of the recommended cat-friendly fabrics. I also selected the 88″ width, the 40″ depth, the bench cushion, and the down alternative reversible seat cushion.

So how has the new sofa withstood four months in the same house as our cat? PERFECTLY!

If you have a cat, you know that the corners are generally the areas that get the most abuse since they make the perfect scratching pad. You can see the damage that our cat did to our last sofa…

And those pictures really don’t show the full damage. In person, those areas were pretty threadbare.

But the new sofa, four months after it was delivered, has zero cat claw scratches on the corners!

It’s the fabric. I’m telling you, it’s the fabric. If you have cats, and you’re tired of them scratching your furniture, try high performance velvet. It’s amazing stuff!

Every time I bring a piece of furniture into the house that’s upholstered in velvet, our cat loses interest in trying to scratch it. High performance velvet is such a tightly woven fabric that, as long as you keep their claws trimmed, cats have a very hard time getting their claws into it. And if they try to scratch and can’t get any resistance, they lose interest.

That has been my experience with velvet furniture over and over and over again. And that’s why I keep buying velvet furniture. 😀

The two purple chairs in our living room are velvet.

The settee in the music room is velvet.

And now the sofa in our living room is velvet. Our cat doesn’t even try to scratch any of them.

The thing about velvet, though, is that you do have to get used to the fact that it never looks perfect, kind of like microsuede or any other fabric that has a nap to it. If something brushes up against it, it’s going to push the nap in the other direction and make those areas appear darker. So I always have those areas on the back where I put my newly-delivered packages until I get a chance to open them.

At first, I thought that would really bother me. I am, after all, a perfectionist, and I like for things to appear neat and tailored and clean and perfect. But surprisingly, the light and dark areas in the velvet only bothered me for about the first day, and then I got over it.

That’s just the nature of velvet, after all. And if I was going to let that bother me, I’d have to spend my life “brushing” the nap of the velvet to keep it perfect. So I had to decide very quickly that I was going to let the velvet be velvet.

But the sofa is very comfortable and used by all. Our cat, Felicity, likes to sleep on it and play on it. Our dog, Cooper, likes to rub up against it. (He weighs 100 pounds, so he’s not allowed on the furniture.) I love to lounge on it. Guests like to sit on it and “pet” the velvet. 😀 So it’s gotten quite a bit of use. But Felicity won’t claw at it. She tried the first day it was delivered, realized it wasn’t satisfying at all, and moved on. Unfortunately, she moved on to my office chair, which has woven fabric that’s just loosely woven enough that she can claw away at it even with her claws trimmed. That desk chair will eventually be replaced with…you guess it…a velvet chair.)

But you can see that Felicity gets up here and plays. She leaves marks every time she jumps up on to the sofa. But her claws don’t cause damage to the fabric. All she does is push the nap of the velvet in a different direction so that it appears darker. But she just can’t get her claws through the fabric to cause any damage.

And one of the best things is that it’s VERY easy to clean. So when she gets up there, rolls around, plays, and sleeps on the sofa, leaving her fur behind, it cleans off so easily.

I imagine that it cleans off so easily because this is polyester velvet. Cotton velvet, in my experience, tends to be a lint and fur trap, which is precisely why it’s my least favorite. I personally find that polyester velvet looks better, feels better, and cleans off better. Most of the time, getting fur off of polyester velvet is as easy as wiping a cloth over the surface. Doing that a couple of times a week, plus regular vacuuming with an upholstery attachment, keeps it clean and fur-free. (Well, as fur-free as furniture can get with two pets in the house.)

Anyway, I just wanted to share with y’all my love of polyester velvet furniture for cat owners, and to give you a look at how our new sofa is holding up against our cat. I couldn’t be more pleased with it!

Again, this is the sofa that we have — the James two-seat sofa in the Galaxy high performance velvet. But even if you’re looking elsewhere for a cat-friendly sofa, I highly suggest looking for something upholstered in a high performance polyester velvet. As long as you keep those claws trimmed regularly, your velvet sofa and your cat can live in peace together in the same house, and you won’t have to resort to sprays, training tapes, plastic wrap, shock mats, and all of the other strategies cat owners use to try to save their furniture from their cat’s claws.