Pet owners will know that their animal friends cost them quite a bit of money without ever giving help financially or even just clearing the messes they leave around the house. It’s rude, isn’t it? After paying their vets bills, buying their food, their bedding and paying for their insurance, they end up being quite expensive, and that’s before they ruin every piece of furniture, your walls and your floors. Furniture, carpets and plant pots often fall victim to the games of cats and the excitable tails of dogs. So if you are thinking of installing new floors in your house or are thinking or purchasing a new pet, read this first!
Scratching
Scratching is one of the main problems of pets on floors. Dog’s thick claws will sometimes dig into wood flooring or tear into carpeting, especially if they like to gallop around your home. Naughty pups will try to pull up carpets too which can be very frustrating. Playful cats are the worst for scratching but it’s not wood flooring you have to worry about, they don’t get much satisfaction from that. Cats prefer scratching material like carpet. They pull the threads out to exercise their claws and apparently as they scratch they release hormones that mark their territory with their scratches.
A good solution with both animals is to train them to not to do these things or to make the rooms where they do these flooring crimes off limits to cats and dogs.
Spills and Stains
Stains can be pretty grim when pets are involved, if a cat or dog is stressed or unwell they may leave you an unexpected present in the form of urine, faeces or vomit. Getting this up off a carpet is not a pretty process, especially if you’ve been out and it has been sitting there for a while. Carpet cleaners or hot soapy water are ways of getting the stains out. If you have a wood floor you will be more fortunate as you should be able to wipe the mess up quickly and easily. If the stain has been left for a while Light oak flooring may need a bit more work than darker shades, but should come out quite simply.
Smell and hairs
Pet smells tend to linger on fabrics, and pet hairs tend to catch themselves neatly in carpets. Getting them out is always a tough battle, fabric spray and vacuuming will help but never seem to fully defeat the issue. Again I would recommend a solid wood floor, the hairs are easily swept and vacuumed and smells tend not to linger in the wood, especially after a good mopping.
There’s loads of blogs online about the ideal environments for dogs, cats and many other pets. These will give you a good idea of what to do should you need any more information. The most important advice you can take from all of this is to make sure your pet is happy in the environment they’re living in. The happier your pet the less chance they’ll act out. For pet behavioural advice, try here.
