Cats don’t like certain scents, especially citrus such as lemon (and some other scents like peppermint you can look them up). Keep some fresh cut lemons in a glass or maybe a peppermint plant near your equipment.
I’ve got three cats and they never bother my stereo equipment - they have window perches to sit and enjoy instead, looking at birds and squirrels which is kind of like "Cat TV", however a friend of mine had some young kittens that wanted to use his speaker grilles as a scratching post (he was dumb and hadn’t provided them a real scratching post and some training on using it). He ended up using some black painted chicken wire on some homemade wooden frames and place them in front of the speakers. That worked fine.
Cats are of course curious creatures and if they see movement, such as a turntable, they will be drawn to it and want to see what you are doing. Provide them with other entertaining activities and they’ll soon leave it alone. Good luck.
How To Keep Cat Off Stereo Equipment?
We adopted a long-hair, one-eyed stray kitten. She is a very lovely cat, however, she likes jumping up on stereo equipment - tube preamp and mono block amplifiers. Am I right in thinking that cat hairs that fall inside the equipment can eventually fry things? Assuming so, I can't be the first person to have a cat AND hifi equipment. How do you keep the cat off? For the record she only jumps up there when she is alone in the room, so I think she gets that we don't want her up there, but just hasn't filed under "relevant info." I would greatly appreciate suggestions!