There are some things we have discovered in trying to keep our cats from tearing apart our furniture through the last four years. We elected not to declaw our cats, primarily because after thorough investigation of the issue and one look at a technical diagram of what is done to a cat to declaw them, I was completely grossed out. That and what happened to my cat Two Tone.

So, we decided to find ways to have the furniture we want and accommodate our cats' scratching behavior.

1. Buy a BIG scratching post. Little ones do not hold their attention. The bigger the better.

2. Make the scratching post smell attractive. Scent is a powerful motivator for cats. Catnip spray works best.

3. Cats love to scratch corners of furniture, so try to arrange your rooms with the sofas and such against walls as much as possible. The added plus to this type of arrangement is, especially in our dinky apartment, it actually made the room appear larger because of the openness. It seemed like an odd layout at first to us, but what brought it together was a big colorful pillow in the middle, something that tied all the other colors together.

4. Buy furniture with soft felt coverings instead of the usual tapestry-like weave. We have a recliner covered with a very soft, but short felt material, with a pattern that almost makes it look like a faux leather. For some reason, whether it was in the middle of the room or against a wall, the cats never scratched this. My guess is, they like stuff that they can catch their claws on, and this material just didn't do the job. ADDED PLUS: I found it was actually easier to clean cat fur off this type of material.

5. Buy a child sized upholstered chair, something that's built like your furniture, but that the cats CAN scratch on. Put it someplace away from the other furniture, in the cat's own special place. I realize this is an expensive buy for cats, but their about the same price as one of the really big cat trees, and are definitely cheaper than the cost of re-upholstering your scratched up furniture and declawing combined. (Especially if you have multiple cats and are considering declawing them all.)

6. Cat's love scratching at the bottoms of doors. I don't know why. After noticing the wear on the carpet my cats were inflicting on the front door, I finally took a spare piece of carpet and mounted it to the bottom 12 inches of the door. The cats love this. They run up to it and *THUMP* scratchscratchscratchscratch. It saves the carpet by the door, gives your cats a large area to scratch that can take a lot of abuse, and if you let it hang down all the way to touch the carpet on the floor, you have an excellent draft blocker.

Just some alternative suggestions to declawing.

This article is Copyright © Diane Barnes, and printed with permission of the author.
February 7, 1999