Cat scratching furniture

suzymonkey

Could any one advise on the best way to tackle this problem of my cat sctaching everything,sofa's.doors,table legs,carpets.She's such a good girl so loving,affectionate.Just driving me nuts with this constant scratching.She's wrecking the house !! P.s she's has a scatch post,but wont go near it !

Sugar_Puff

You should try bit of cat nip, I use it on my when he goes a bit wild and it usually calms him down.

Maybe try putting the cat nip on the scratch post ?

Gelly123

Hi Suzy

We have the same problem - we have two cats, a female called "Pete" who is nearly 10 and scratches our sofas after we've gone to bed and a 3.5 year old male called Jimmy who scratches the carpet when we're not around and also when he's looking us straight in the eye!

We have 5 scratching posts around the house and the only time they use them is to sit on the top platforms to survey their empire - not to scratch.

We've tried everything from anti scratch sprays, small water pistols - not much use we've found as Jimmy loves water!, using catnip and also feliway products (the plug in and the pump spray). The only thing that seems to have had a bit of an effect is the Feliway but the sofa is still scratched to pieces so we only buy cheap / second hand sofas as we know they'll be ruined.

Also had to give the carpet a "hair cut" at the weekend as there were a few loops pulled out of it.

If anybody has any amazing ideas, I'd love to find out and give them a try but we have pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact they are scratchers - grrrrr - but so cute we forgive them!!!

Gelly

penny_pincha

Cats like to scratch a surface which has a texture. They also scratch to mark their territory (have you ever noticed them doing it in a prominent place outside on a fence post or a tree?) They have scent glands between their claws which when they scracth they put onto the thing they are scratching.

If you play with a toy on the scratching post so that they own scent becomes incorporated into the post they will want to do it there again.

SadBunny

You could make your own version of these using double-sided sticky tape. They are quite expensive and it sounds like you'd need a lot.
Other ideas here.