If you want to brighten your home up with some flower bouquets, and you have cats, here are some tips to follow.

Opt for vases with tapered tops and make sure you secure each vase to the surface you place it on

When your cats see the vases of flowers you put around your home, they will, due to their curious nature, probably want to examine them, and perhaps play with the flowers or the vases themselves. They may also be inclined to sip water from the vases. These actions could result in the vases falling over, the flowers being pulled out of their position within the arrangements and might even cause the flowers to wilt prematurely, due to the cats drinking too much of the water out of the vases they've been placed in.

Fortunately, there are a few easy ways to protect your flowers from your cats. Firstly, it's best to opt for vases with tapered, narrow tops so that after the flowers have been placed in them, there won't be enough room for your cats to dip their paws into the water or to put their heads into the vases to drink from them. Your cats will also find it harder to drag flowers out of vases that are this shape.

Secondly, make sure you secure the vases to the surfaces you put them on. You can do this by placing double-sided tape or blu-tack on their bases; whilst this won't make the vases immovable, it should make them stable enough that if your cats paw at them, these vessels probably won't tip over.

Spritz the area around the flowers with vinegar

To ensure the flower arrangements don't get damaged by your cats, you should also keep a spray bottle filled with a solution of water and vinegar near the vases, and spritz some of this mixture onto the exterior of the vases as well as onto the surface that each flower arrangement is on. The reason for this is that whilst vinegar is not toxic to cats, most felines dislike it and will avoid areas in which this substance is present.

Doing this won't make your home smell like vinegar all day, as the scent tends to become undetectable to humans shortly after it's applied to any surface. However, because cats have a much better sense of smell than humans, they'll still notice its scent and stay away from the flower arrangements on which it's been sprayed for a long time after you've spritzed it in these areas.

For more information on flowers, contact a professional near you.