If you used water to clean the stain, you set the ring. Its there to stay.

Cleaning cods "S" is dry cleaning fluids only. No water.

One can carefully water clean _most_ S coded fabrics. Rayon is often an exception and so is cotton. What you are seeing _may_ be simply a color shift in the spot area, or it could be that "yack" acids has bleached the color. The first thing I would have done was to clean "seam-to-seam" to avoid an obviously cleaned spot. At this point, you can't do much worse. Don't kick yourself too much because S cleaners would probably not have removed the cat yack. Thus les jeux sont fait at the moment of the yacking.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cleaning chenille

Thank you Bobsmyuncle for weighing in! (I've clipped several of your posts).
In further research, I've found suggestions for using rubbing alcohol and a blow dryer, and also for using baby wipes (assuming it's the alcohol again). What do you think?

First rule of solvents: Likes dissolve likes.

For water-based stains (food, beverage, etc.), water is best to clean. Technically, water, the universal solvent, is "polar" meaning it has a positive side and a negative side and attracts like material.

For greasy stains (ink, lipstick, motor oil, etc.), you need a hydrocarbon cleaner,. These are non-polar. Sometimes water and a surfactant (detergent) will do the job as the surfactant has a hydrophilic (water loving) side and a hydrophobic (water hating) side. Thus it bridges the gap.

Alcohols are very selective solvents. They work well for some things (think alcohol-based hair spray on fresh ink stains) and not at all for others. I don't know whether the yack is alcohol-soluble or not. I normally use a water-based enzyme cleaner for these. The enzyme breaks up the proteins. If needed, I'll follow up with an oxidizing organic stain remover (hydrogen peroxide and a catalyst).

Chemistry of cleaning.

[end of chemistry lesson]

Sometimes you just need to start gentle and kick it up a notch at a time until something works.

But for any stain that I've used water on, once I get the stain out, I clean "seam-to-seam" to avoid ringing stains or stains that are actually simply "clean spots."

oh, and I would avoid extreme heat as it can set some stains.