I'm not a cat owner, but I read somewhere that cats don't like certain surface textures (Aluminium foil I think was one of them). Maybe if you covered the speakers up to cat height with something that they don't like, they would leave your BLs alone. Once the cats have formed the habit of not touching your speakers, you might be able to remove the covers. Punishing the animal doesn't do any good, they would just scratch the speakers when you're not around.

Here's a BeoLab 5 from a pair we bought a couple of years ago..

Apparently his cat used to take a run up at the rear of them, jump, then hang there (also digging it's rear claws into the fret) until it got bored, then it would go and do the same to the other speaker.

He thought this was cute and funny.  Personally, I don't advocate cruelty to animals, but if that was my cat I'd have given it a free flying lesson - with the aid of my right foot...

Lee

How on earth you could think that was cute and funny I just do not know!

Speakers worth an absolute fortune and ruined! I would have been absolutely livid

Ben

I would become mad. To me there bleeds the heart if I the BL5 sees

Interesting, perhaps not such a ridiculous question after all.

Can't believe the mess of those 5's!!

Maybe if I got them a nice new scratch post and put it in the same room, playing with them around it, maybe even using some cat nip to entice them to it.  Then if they went near the speakers I could spray them with water?  Certainly for the first few weeks I wouldn't leave them alone with them until I'm sure they wouldn't touch them. I'm sure it's just an exercise of training them, but anyone with Siamese cats will know, despite the fact they're super intelligent (for a cat), they also don't like being told what to do.  Reminds me of myself really!!

David King wrote:

I know this is a ridiculous discussion, however I'm considering a purchase of BL20's where the only thing which Is holding me back is the fear that my two Siamese cats will see the speakers as scratch posts!

Has anyone had experience of this?

What are your thoughts?

Believe it or not but I trained our cat for not accessing the living room and the lower floor with the bedroom, guest room, bathroom etc. She can go to the kitchen and the dining room but not elsewhere – there’s an invisible frontier. I did this by systematically saying very loud "No!" and running behind her the moment she tried to leave her allowed zone. This took me a couple of months (I usually work at home) and some discipline but she has completely accepted this now. You have to know that she’s my wife’s cat (she found her in the garden) but today behaves like she never knew her and prefers to sit on me. Most probably she’s thinking now that I‘m the main tiger in the house.

Ah, and during the night our cat sleeps in the kitchen behind a closed door (she has three different sleeping possibilities inside and an electronic cat flap for going outside), just to be sure 🙂. But as you can imagine, this is not an option for children …

I love cats, but I can't eat a whole one...

Not a cat lover at all as you might can tell, but I can also guarantee that most of the damnable fur balls will treat anything like a speaker grill as a scratching post. In all my audio years I've seen more than my share of scratched up speakers. You can put an alternate post in the room all you want and I'm betting the animal will ignore it deliberately and head for the speakers.

Felix did it once.........

And after a stern telling-off, I have assurances it wont happen again.

Mr 10Percent wrote:

Felix did it once.........

And after a stern telling-off, I have assurances it wont happen again.

I assume he's your 'flat mate' ...