How to thwart cats

A bed of nails would cure the sleeping cats choice of bed

Tin Foil keeps cats away from furniture, maybe lay some at the foot of your gear, it works for some pals of mine.

Alright all joking aside... In order to not Use a SCREEN that will short things out, I have in the past taken Nylon Screen from your local whoever, and you take off the top of the unit and cut sections of the screen to fit nicely over the grates in the unit, attach with a decent electrical tape, the heat would probably dry out Duct tape and Masking tape won't hold anything...

You can get Grey or Black, Grey is pretty cool in contrast to black components looks sometimes.. But if your Tubes or unit run super hot electrical tape should probably hold up fine, but just in case make sure you have nylon or whatever plastic type stretchy screen material they have, cause if it falls a bit or sags it will not short anything out, but could melt a little on a tube I don't know. Currently i have nothing in my system that has anything that can be hairballed so I have not used the method in a few years.

Put some balloons near your components. When the cats are hanging around the 'off limits' area, pop the balloon(s). They'll make the connection and avoid the area. You might have to repeat the lesson. My cat avoided the area like the plague, but sometimes you might have to leave a balloon around the amp to refresh their memory, depends on the cat.
Simple + cheap, just like me.

Funny, my cats never mess with my gear and I never had a problem with them clawing at my speaker cloth.

On the other hand, I was at Dusty Vawter's house once doing an audition of his gear and watched his cat actually climb his speakers on a few occasions.