Stop Your Cat From Scratching Furniture: Proven Techniques That Work
Most cat owners have probably faced this problem before: you find that your furry friend simply won’t stop clawing at the furniture. This can be a real pain, since cats show no distinction between those old chairs you got at a garage sale and your expensive sofa- when the mood strikes them, they will scratch at anything. However, it’s remarkably hard to convince them to stop through training. When cats claw the furniture, they’re doing so to both sharpen their claws and mark their territory, two things that come naturally to them. If you tell them off, then they’ll only get confused- so you need to find a better way of encouraging them to leave the furniture alone.
The best way to stop your cat from scratching the furniture is to provide them with their own scratching post. All you need to do is identify where it is that your cat commonly claws at, or near a radiator so that they are naturally attracted to the nice, warm area. Scratching posts(check out www.pawsomepetsupplies.com) are specially crafted to be particularly enticing to cats, since the material really helps them get their claws to a sharp point.
If you opt for a scratching post that comes with a platform for your cat to sit on, then you might also want to try placing it near a window. As you’ve probably already noticed yourself, cats love to sit looking out of the window, watching the world go by. If they can do this from their scratching post, then this will soon become a favorite spot of theirs- and therefore they’ll limit their scratching to there, where they feel most comfortable.
If you have multiple cats in your house, then make sure you give each of them their own scratching post. As we mentioned before, scratching is a way for cats to mark their territory, so if yours don’t get along, they might not want to share the same post. In cases like this, it’s best to put each post near the cat’s favorite area to sleep in, so it’s already firmly in their territory.
Of course, scratching posts are made to be clawed at vertically, but this isn’t every cat’s thing. Some like to stretch their bodies out horizontally when they scratch, so a different approach is needed. In this case, you’ll want to invest in a corrugated cardboard scratcher that can sit on the floor. If you find that it’s the bottom of your furniture that bears the brunt of your cat’s claws, then give this a try. You should soon find that your furniture is completely scratch-free! The only downside is that these scratchers need to be replaced more regularly since they are only made from cardboard, but since they are inexpensive, that shouldn’t be much of a problem.
To stop your cat from going back to the furniture, you should identify anywhere that they have scratched, and then carefully clean it with warm water. This will remove their scent, so that they don’t end up finding their way back there. Cats are highly territorial animals, and once they’ve marked an area, they’ll keep going back to it unless you remove their scent.
