Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
Saving Your Furniture and Your Sanity
A man buys a scratching post to save his furniture. A cat knows the post is a decoy and the door frame is the real estate. — YNOT!
Four hundred dollars. That is what one cat owner in a group I belong to says her cat has cost her in door frames. Not chewed by a dog. Not kicked in by a burglar. Decorated, slowly and with great satisfaction, by nine pounds of cat. She is moving, and she wrote to the group the way a person writes to a lawyer: what can I do so this does not happen again?
Another member asked the same question with two kittens and a sofa hanging in the balance. Between them they got sixty-five answers, several arguments, and one suggestion involving a water pistol that I will deal with shortly.
Now, I have lived long enough to know that when a man and a cat disagree about furniture, the man is laboring under a misunderstanding about whose furniture it is.
SCRATCHING IS NOT VANDALISM. IT IS MAINTENANCE.
Humans look at a cat working a door frame and see destruction. The cat sees a morning at the office.
A cat scratches for the same reasons a man sharpens a pencil, files his nails, and stretches when he gets out of a chair. The old claw sheaths have to come off so the new claw can do its work. The muscles in the shoulders and back need a good long pull. And there are scent glands between those toes, which means every scratch is also a signature. The cat is not ruining your woodwork. The cat is signing the deed to the property, in a hand you cannot read, on a document you cannot appeal.
This is important, because it settles what is possible. You cannot stop a cat from scratching, any more than you can stop a river from being wet. You do not abolish the scratching. You relocate it, to a piece of property the cat is legally entitled to destroy.
LOCATION, LOCATION, AND OTHER LAWS OF REAL ESTATE
Here is where most people fail, and fail honestly. They buy a fine scratching post and put it in a spare corner where it will not spoil the look of the room. Then they are amazed when the cat keeps using the door frame.
Friend, the cat is scratching THAT door frame, in THAT spot, for reasons of geography. It is by the door, where the comings and goings happen. It is on the route. Cats scratch where the life of the house flows past, the way a man puts his shop sign on the main street and not in the woods.
So the post goes where the crime occurs. Not near it. Not in the same postal district. Next to it. If the cat is signing the door frame by the hallway, the post stands beside that door frame, like a rival candidate setting up his booth next to the incumbent. If the sofa arm is the target, the post goes at the end of the sofa, touching it if you can manage it. If the cat scratches when she wakes up — and most do, the way you stretch before coffee — there should be a post near the sleeping spot, because a cat will use the nearest legal surface and will not commute.
And mind the height. A proper post is taller than the cat is long, because the whole pleasure is in the full stretch, paws high, back arched, claws in deep. A short post is a step stool. Cats know the difference even if the pet store does not.
EVERY CAT HAS A RELIGION ABOUT TEXTURE
Some cats are sisal cats, some are carpet cats, and some swear by cardboard and will turn up their noses at anything grander. You do not get to choose the cat’s religion. You get to discover it, by experiment, which is a polite word for buying the wrong thing twice.
Watch what the cat already scratches. A cat working vertical wood and door frames wants a tall vertical post. A cat raking the rug wants a flat cardboard scratcher on the floor. Offer both if you are unsure. It is cheaper than one more door frame, and arithmetic, for once, is on your side.
BRIBERY: THE OLDEST LAW ENFORCEMENT IN THE WORLD
Now you have the right post in the right place, and the cat walks past it like a tourist past a museum. This is normal. A post must be introduced, and introductions in the cat world run on bribery, as they do in most worlds.
Rub catnip on it, if your cat is one of the majority who take an interest. Drag a string toy across it so the claws land there in the heat of battle. And when the cat uses it — the first time, every time at the start — praise her like she has won a prize and produce a treat. You are not spoiling her. You are paying a toll, and the cat is honest enough to require cash on delivery.
Meanwhile, make the old target temporarily unlovely. Double-sided tape on the door frame works wonders — cats regard sticky paws the way you regard stepping in something at a fair. A cover thrown over the sofa arm changes the texture and the treaty terms. Foil has its believers. None of this is permanent. It only has to last until the new habit is older than the old one, which in a cat is about three weeks of steady bribery.
A WORD TO RENTERS, FROM THE DEPOSIT SIDE OF LIFE
If you rent, this fight is not about beauty. It is about a deposit, which is money your landlord is holding hostage against exactly this kind of negotiation. So fight like a renter.
Clear plastic corner guards and furniture protectors exist, they are cheap, they come off without a trace, and they turn a scratchable surface into a boring one. Door-frame guards do the same for the woodwork. A tall post at each damaged site, tape during the retraining weeks, and guards on the wood will cost you less than fifty dollars, which compares favorably with four hundred.
Keep the claws trimmed, too. A cat with trimmed nails still scratches — the instinct is not in the nail, it is in the soul — but trimmed nails do a fraction of the damage while the diplomacy proceeds. Ten minutes, a pair of clippers, a treat afterward. If your cat objects to the procedure, wrap the negotiations in a towel and trim one paw a day. Rome was not manicured in a day either.
WHAT DOES NOT WORK, AS REPORTED BY EVERYONE WHO TRIED IT
Shouting does not work. To a cat, a shouting human is weather. It is noticed, the way thunder is noticed, and then life goes on exactly as before. You cannot out-volume an animal who has decided you are a climate.
The water pistol does not work either. The cat does not learn “do not scratch the frame.” The cat learns “do not scratch the frame while the armed man is home,” and files you under hazards of the premises. You have not changed the behavior. You have hired yourself as a full-time sentry, unpaid.
And do not carry the cat to the post and press her paws against it, as if demonstrating a piano. The post must be her idea. Your whole job is stage management: right post, right place, right bribe, and patience.
That lady with the four hundred dollars of door frames is moving to a new place, and here is the hopeful part: a new home is a new treaty. Put the posts out before the cat arrives, one beside the likely door, one by the sofa, one by the bed. Guard the wood for the first month. Bribe like a ward politician, and the first signature she writes can go on the post instead of the frame.
The cat will scratch something until her last day. That is not a defect in the cat. That is the cat, maintaining her tools, stretching her back, and signing her name to the house she graciously permits you to pay for. Your only choice is which piece of property receives the signature. Choose a twenty-dollar post, and let the door frames live in peace.
