j, be careful what you offer! :) (and, thanks!)

Yeah put me in the expensive tastes but don`t mind used category. Our thrift store living room set was $200 for all three pieces and lasted over six years. When we moved here though, we bought an expensive modern leather couch which looks awesome but is not utterly comfy. It stood up to the dog but not cat. I use discount shopping not to buy cheap things but to buy expensive things for normal thing prices.

Microsuede is a cinch to clean, but I don't know how badly the cats might scratch it up.

We have a microsuede sectional with a scratched up arm that my old pal Josie liked to dig her claws into. However, I haven't seen my other cats scratch it ever so maybe it was just her thing. Love my couch, though!

I'm wary of getting a used couch, only because Cincinnati has a bedbug problem of EPIC proportions. And even if someone doesn't *think* their used couch has bedbugs -- i.e., they aren't being malicious and deliberately foisting a buggy couch on someone -- it might still have them without the person knowing it.

I realize that furniture stores could have a problem, too, but it's a lot less likely.

My mom has a microsuede loveseat from Jennifer that we like so much that my Aunt bought two just like it. No dogs and only one occasional cat around them, so I don't know how it holds up.

I, too, have a Suburu Forester 2005, which could be quieter -- javachik, very interested in how the quietening works out....

Happy Birthday Jess!

Happy Birthday, Jessica!

Teppy, is leather out of the question? I have no idea what cats would do to it, but dog hair and dog slobber are easily cleaned from it.

I, of course, was not smart enough to take my own advice here, and have an expensive couch, which I love, love, love, but which is all wrong, wrong, wrong when someone in the house is in diapers.

Happy Birthday Jessica!

Thanks guys!

Did anyone see Where the Wild Things Are? Good? Bad? Indifferent?

LOVED IT. Cried for the entire last half hour.*

*Though I should note that I am pregnant and hormonal and pretty much prone to crying at the drop of a hat about anything that involves kids having any kind of emotions at all.

We bought an expensive leather couch with some money DH inherited from his grandmother, and it's held up for about 8 years through two moves. We decided to go whole hog and shell out for Real Furniture after two semi-cheap IKEA couches collapsed on us mere months after bringing them home.

Happy birthday, Jess!