Turn Your Cat Into Your Friend And Save Your Furniture. Give Him A Cat Scratching Post
One of the best companions you will ever have is a cat. A cat makes a good pet, both for adults as well as children. But one annoying habit that all cats have is that they love to scratch the furniture.
At some time or another all cat owners find that their cat is scratching. I don’t mean that they’re scratching you, it’s much more likely that they’re scratching the legs of your furniture.
It is so common for a cat owner to discover one day that the legs of the furniture are covered in scratch marks. So why do cats love to scratch? And why would providing a cat scratching pole help with the problem?
Scratching is a normal behaviour for a cat. It’s an instinctive habit for cats, it helps to sharpen their claws. In fact scratching is a perfectly normal part of their behaviour and it’s not likely that you will be able to stop your moggy from doing it. Much more likely is that you will be able to redirect their attention from the legs of your favourite piece of furniture to a more suitable piece of furniture, namely a cat scratching post.
The way you do that is by making it less pleasant for the cat to scratch your furniture and more pleasant for him to scratch something that can be damaged at no cost to you. A cat scratching post is a piece of cat furniture specifically designed to be scratched so that your favourite feline can relieve his need to sharpen his claws in an appropriate place.
Scratching poles are really very simple. A dedicated scratching pole is just something that is covered in a material that cats love to claw such as carpet.
So what do you do to make sure he scratches his pole and not the furniture? Cats respond to positive behaviour from their owners, so don’t punish him for doing what comes naturally. You can take a simple approach of making it more attractive to him to use his scratch and less attractive to use the furniture, for example by putting catnip on his post so he is attracted to it, and reinforcing his positive behaviour with treats.
Training your feline to direct his attention from one piece of furniture to another is sometimes a difficult task, however can be achieved perfectly easily with some patience and perseverance. If you see him heading towards the legs of your favourite furniture with itchy claws then pick him up, take him to the scratching post to see if he gets the idea.
One thing that you should never do is to de-claw your cat. Declawing should be outlawed. You may however trim his claws from time to time so that he is doing less damage whilst he is being trained. There’s no doubt that a cat makes a fine pet, but like any animal they do have their annoying little habits that you need to deal with. Once you know what those habits are and deal with them appropriately your cat will be a friend for life.
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Tags: cat scratching, cat scratching poles, cat scratching post, cat scratching posts