I love my cats dearly but my sewing room is TABOO, Verbotin, Forbidden, do not enter, NO CATS ALLOWED. Partially for fear of what happened with Katia and her Maine Coon. I was a cat fancier long before I was a sewer and also have heard how often cats and kittens will eat thread and swallow needles that causes fatal intestinal blockage. I had a Norwegian Forest Cat that loved the thread and would take it off my sewing machine and string it about the house. One time he had taken the thread from my spool holder all the way downstairs and wrapped it around furniture while managing not to unthread the machine nor break the thread. When I came home and discovered my thread festooned house I totally freaked wondering if he had swallowed any or worse yet found a threaded needle. Then one of my ragdoll cats decided he wanted to be up on the ironing board when the iron was on. He jumped up and it sent the iron flying off and crashing to the floor with the cat near by and me freaking out at how close I had just come to a disaster. Had the iron hit my baby it could have killed him. It was then I made my sewing room off limits, complete with sign on the door that says "all kitties welcome" :lol: (the sign went up before the room became off limits to felines). My thread cat has since passed on and none of my current crew seems interested in thread, however the closed off sewing room has a very alluring attraction because it is forbidden. It is only the ragdoll that had the iron incident that really caterwauls about coming in and only when I am in there and he is not, any other time he could care less about that room. The rest are fine about it. I do have my hand quilting sewing out where it can be gotten to and no one pays attention. And with 4 longhaired cats and 1 shorthaired I have cat hair on everything. Every hand quilting session starts with a dehairing session because my handquilting is in the living room. But hair also manages to find its way into the sewing room as well.