Is your cat scratching up your furniture or tearing your carpet apart? We are here to help you and your cat reach a compromise. It can be frustrating when your cat starts tearing apart your favorite things. There are a few reasons why your cat might do this: to sharpen their nails, to mark their territory, or out of boredom.
10 tips to prevent cat scratching
1. Get your cat their own cat furniture
Something that will really help you is to get your cat their own cat furniture. A big cat treat will be great so they have a place that they can jump and they can scratch. But a smaller cat scratching post will also do the trick.
2. What your cats scratching preference is?
Before buying a cat scratching post you’ll want to find out what your cats scratching preference is. So if you’re having a problem with your cat scratching the arms of your couch or your table legs, then your cat is probably an upright scratcher so a cat scratching post that goes up right. So they can stretch and get a nice good dig at it. If your cat is scratching your carpets up then your cat would probably prefer a flat scratching toy.
3. What kind of texture your cat prefer?
And that’s something else that you’ll want to consider is what kind of texture your cat prefer? Again if your cat is scratching the carpet, then you might want to get a carpeted scratching post. If your cat is scratching all of your wood furniture then maybe get a wood post. Our cats have never really been into wood but they love carpet. So the carpeted, cat trees and cat scratching post have been a huge hit in our home.
4. Bring your cat over to their play area
Once your cat has their own area, for playing and scratching, you might find that they still go back to the same spot on your couch or your chairs to scratch. If this happens, the best thing to do is to just pick your cat up gently and bring them over to their play area and just set them down and ignore them. That’s all you have to do.
5. Act out what you want them to do
The next tip is to act out what you want them to do. So if you place them on their new cat tree and they look clueless and they have no idea what you want from them, then show them that this is the good stuff this is the material that you want them to use.
6. Always reward them when they use their cat furniture
So you always encourage them you can even give them a treat, just make sure you give them lots of praise for doing something good.
7. Be consistent, repeat the process, and be patient
Never yell at your cat because your cat does not understand while you’re yelling.
8. Moving the cat scratching post in front of the area that they’ve been ruining
If your cat continues this even after you’ve set them up with an awesome cat tree or an awesome scratching post you can try moving the cat scratching post in front of the area that they’ve been ruining. So if they’re scratching your door apart then place one of the scratching posts right in front of the door.
9. Covering up your furniture
You can also try covering up your furniture with a protective cover or a blanket.
10. Get your cat’s nails trimmed regularly
And my last tip is to get your cat’s nails trimmed regularly. Most vets will offer this. There are also some companies out there that offer nail covers their little guards that go over your cat’s nails and they’re supposed to prevent them from being able to scratch.
I hope that some of these tips have been helpful to you. And remember that cat scratching is not a bad thing it is actually fun for your cat and it’s good for your cat to stretch.
So turn it to discourage scratching all together and encourage your cat to scratch somewhere that’s appropriate.
