Is it normal for my roommate to ban my cat
For starters, I have a cat that I fostered for a year and a half until I actually adopted him. When I first started out fostering him, he hated people. He wanted nothing to do with me or my family from home. It took a while for him to warm up to me, and now he is the sweetest, most loving boy ever! He's truly my pride and joy.
Unfortunately when I was still living back home with him, I had to keep him in my room because he didn't get along with other cats (my old household has 6 other cats) so I had to schedule times for him to be able to wander around the house to keep the other cats safe. Fast forward, I find a roommate and let her know that I'm bringing a cat. She had no issue with it.
Here's the problem, I wasn't aware that my cat scratched furniture until I moved because there was nothing in my previous room that he could scratch. My roommate has couches that my cat unfortunately scratched up a little when we first moved but now he's been okay (still does it once in a while but I immediately stop him). She's pissed at the situation, and I totally understand that. I would probably be a little upset too. I've offered many solutions: getting spray bottles (which I have done), get more scratching posts for that room (which I have also done), get couch protectors, sprays to keep the cat away, etc. I've even offered to pay for the couches, in which I would own those couches but she refuses. She doesn't want to hear any of the solutions and wants to essentially ban my cat from going downstairs at all (which I think is a bit of an extreme jump).
I'm really not sure what to do, as a cat owner I think I've done my job in attempting to fix the problem but she can't get over the idea of banning him from downstairs all together. She doesn't want to hear my solutions, she just wants to go all the way and ban him. Right now moving again just isn't an option for me due to finances, but I also want my cat to be able to experience more than one room in the house. At the current moment, he can only be downstairs if I'm consistently watching him (ex: he can't be downstairs if I'm doing dishes because I'm not watching him).
From my point of view, there's no way for him to know that these actions are wrong unless he's actively being trained and downstairs to learn. He's not a human, you can't just say no one time and he'll stop, you have to be consistent with it. There's no way for me to be consistent though if he's not even allowed to be downstairs. I'm just feeling stuck and not really sure what to do. Any suggestions? Anything that maybe I'm failing to view from my perspective?