hi, me and my fiancee are moving into a new apartment thats unfurnished. as ive spent the last 3 years being a student and living in random horrible furniture, we are not sure what would look nice with what. there is brown carpet throughout (but really nice) creme walls or magnoila perhaps. we are looking at this sofa for the living room : http://www.csl-sofas.co.uk/checkout/index/Moda and we saw these curtains that we really like: http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/1268982/c_1/1|category_root|Home+and+furniture|14417894/c_2/3|15701239|Curtains%2C+blinds+and+accessories|14417937/c_3/4|cat_14417937|Curtains|14417938.htm do you think these colours would look good against the brown carpet? i think the curtains would but im not entirely sure about the sofa. any ideas would be good?? xx

i have had my cats for about 3 years. in the past couple of months they have been scratching my furniture and walls. the paint is even starting to chip off and the furniture has tags. i tried spraying the cats with water right away after so hopefully they can try and identify what they did was wrong, and even giving them a little slap with some news paper because the news paper makes a loud noise and is not harmful. but they still go at it. how do i stop them from ruining my house? and why did they start doing this all of a sudden? they are neutered. one likes to be out side and the other likes to be inside. they both do it. and i have noticed they have been getting a little sassy. they are starting to scratch my boyfriend i. that is intolerable. the other day my boyfriend was playing innocently with my cat and bit him on the hand. i could tell it was hard because he had teeth marks. that isn't the first time they have done this. they used to be so good. they still are but they have their moments. what can i do?

Our 8 year old female cat recently dealt with a bout of diarrhea. It has been treated and resolved, but she’s still inconsistent with her litter box usage. While we were trying to resolve the problem, we generally kept her confined to our basement bathroom. While confined she used the box appropriately most of the time, but still sometimes chose the floor (linoleum) or the window sill (wood). We gave her a trial run of the house last week. After being out for about 48 hours, she went #2 on a chair in the basement and then #1 on our bed. This is the one and only time during this whole ordeal that she has urinated inappropriately. After that, we shut both cats in the room in the basement that contains their food, water and normal cat box (with plenty of space separating the dining area from the bathroom). After close to 24 hours in there with no accidents, I gave the cats a trial run of the whole basement yesterday. Only a few hours after getting out, the female went #2 on the floor (carpet tile) so back to the kitty room they went. She’s been to the vet and shows no sign of infection. These cats have been with us for more than 7 years. We’ve been in this house for 2.5 years and the litter box has always been in the exact same spot. We haven’t purchased any new furniture in two years and our daughter is 13 months old so she isn’t exactly “new” either. At this point, we assume the stress from being isolated is the reason for her inconsistent box usage. I just don’t know how to fix it! I can’t exactly return her to her normal life while she’s not using the box appropriately. It kills me to keep them both locked away in a windowless room, but I don’t know what to do other than to slowly try to reintroduce her to the environment. Any tips or suggestions on dealing with this?

My cat occasionally takes a notion to go on a destructive rampage throughout the house, especially when I'm busy or sleeping. He chews on furniture, knocks things off of shelves and counters, and loudly tries to open cupboards and closets. Is there anything I can do to get him to stop destroying things when I can't get up to physically prevent him?