If you put a sheet over the mouse traps or put them in paper bags, the cat won't be injured. It does deter them from getting up there again. Works on dogs too!

Since I just quilt for myself, and I don’t have a way to isolate my long arm I just accept the fact that cats will be cats. If I give a quilt, I let them know it comes from a neat freak that happens to have cats, and the quilt has been washed and placed in a cat free place. When I’m done with a quilt I roll it up and place it in a pillowcase and store it in a closed closet that my cats don’t have access to.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]600977[/ATTACH]This is working for me. I have two cats, one 10 year old Maine Coon and a feral kitten who is now 2 1/2 years old. They want to be with me at all times and usually lie down under my feet and I end up stepping on them or something. So when I saw the space under the cutting table (old desk) I just bought two more beds at Dollar General and put them under there. They just moved in on their own. Sorry they are not in there for the picture, but I'm happy that they don't want to jump on the table.

LOL! My Sophie is skiddish around plastic bags.

my animals are not allowed in the room I quilt in--but I have taken a quilt off the frame to turn for borders, or because I needed to put another one on for a rush job, etc. I'd suggest if you are planning to take one end off every time you finish quilting that you start using zippers instead of pins to put the quilt on--would say a lot of time.

Barb--have you ever seen the YouTube video on how to add to the backing without taking it off the frame? I just had to use that and it works--although her demo is with a small wallhanging and I had a 100"quilt on, so was a little more time consuming! Next time I definitely will measure more carefully!

Good reason to have zippers on your leaders. You can disconnect the quilt and zip it right back on. Been there with the back too short etc and the zippers saved a lot of time.

I put empty pop cans on teh quilt. They'd fall off and the cat didn't like the noise. I found if I left a quilt on the frame for 3-4 days, he'd get up on it. But if I got it done and off the frame sooner, he left it alone.

I had set my frame up in the dining room and could not close it off. Was major motivator to building a new home for the LA.

BTW - so far I have ended up with short backing twice. I watched a video about adding to the back without taking the quilt off the frame, and it worked very well. Basically you flip up the batting and quilt, and then pin the new section to the underside of the backing - right sides together. I normally overlap a few inches so I don't have to worry about the seam allowance. With channel locks on (or a clip) you use the LA to sew the two backing sections together. Then you unpin the short backing, trim the excess, and pin the new backing and roll it up and finish the quilt.

If I leave a quilt on the longarm I throw a king size sheet over it.

My Sassy Cat too, she gets her head in the handles and just goes flying though the house like a demon is after her.