How to get cats to stop scratching furniture

After getting asked so many times on Instagram and on my blog for my tips on how to get cats to stop scratching furniture, I thought it was time to finally dedicate a post to this subject. I have written a couple of other cat care posts about how to help a scared cat adjust, my elderly cat care tips and how I trap, neuter and return feral cats in our neighborhood if you are interested and I’m also hoping to write more of them, so send me ideas if you have questions.

So here we go…

Before we get to my tips though, I want to stress that things get destroyed when you adopt pets into your home just like they do when you have kids. It’s inevitable! If you can’t handle the occasional damage to your home decor then you shouldn’t adopt pets. Over the course of having cats for the past 23 years and children for the past 18 years 😉 I’ve had my fair share of home decor heartache with things getting destroyed but the companionship I get in return is worth it to me.

How to get cats to stop scratching furniture

Another important subject I wanted to talk about is a question I get all the time:

Is it bad to declaw a cat

YES! Yes, it is bad and there are no buts and ifs. I feel very strongly about this. NY is the first state to finally ban declawing and I’m hoping that other states will follow that example. Several cities in California have also banned declawing.

When I checked Google for questions on what people searched for regarding declawing their cats, my disgust increased. I saw phrases like “how to declaw your cat at home” and things along that line. What is wrong with people?

Declawing can cause more issues

Declawing is not just pulling out a nail as you would on humans which is if you’ve ever had a nail and nailbed injury horribly painful! It is amputation! About one-third of the paw gets amputated by taking the bone that holds the claw off the paws. It is traumatizing, painful and can cause longlasting chronic pain and behavioral issues. When cats don’t feel well they develop behavioral issues like aggression and peeing outside of the litterbox. So declawing a cat because it is scratching your furniture can open another big can of worms. As a result, a lot of times that poor cat gets discarded like trash in a shelter or just outside. Leaving a cat outside without claws to fend for itself is beyond cruel because the cat has no means of defending itself from enemies or hunting successfully.

When we adopted our declawed Harry at 8 years old, he came with an assortment of behavioral issues which included biting others and peeing everywhere in the basement. I’m happy to say that he lived with us for another 8 years of his life before passing away from kidney failure. We were able to manage his behavior and loved him the way he was left behind by the humans who had damaged him.

Let them scratch

What kind of stupid tip is this? Well, it is in a cat’s nature to scratch. They stretch, sharpen their claws and leave their scent this way. And most importantly it makes them happy. The best decision I made for them and for my beloved furniture, was to buy lots of small scratching posts and scatter them throughout the house. I placed those posts in locations where the cats chose to scratch items they shouldn’t.

I bought several of THESE small posts and when the sisal is shredded, I just replace it with a new rope instead of buying an entirely new post. This sisal rope HERE has worked well for me in the past.

We also have two large cat trees in our bedroom where I also occasionally replace the sisal. One of the trees I built myself, the other one I bought HERE. They really love both of them.

Some people like buying the cardboard scratchers but I don’t like them because they make a mess when the cats shred the cardboard into tiny pieces.

If you don’t have room for posts, you could try sisal mat furniture protectors as a scratching option as well.

Encourage the cats to scratch

Some of my cats wanted to keep scratching my sofas, rugs, and chairs so I started to pick them up and move them to the places where they could scratch. I try not to yell at my cats and never squirt them with a water bottle. Positive reinforcement is what I like because I don’t ever want them to be scared of me.

{Be careful with placing salt lamps in your home, they can be harmful to cats if licked. My cats, however, are not at all interested. Should they ever show interest, I will remove them immediately!}

Reward scratching the right items

When I first placed the scratchers throughout the house, I rewarded them with treats for scratching their dedicated spots. It is so cute to see how happy they are. It’s a lot less stressful for everyone involved.

What if your cat still keeps scratching your furniture even with scratchers and trees?

Add scratch deterrents to your home

Before mentioning anything else, I want to add that deterrents alone to get a cat to stop scratching your furniture won’t work. You have to have other options in place that they can scratch instead or they will just move to another piece of furniture.

When we adopted our first cats 24 years ago, I made the mistake of just adding sticky tape to my sofas and chairs and didn’t give them anything else to scratch because I didn’t like the look of the scratching posts. I got over that visual dislike because I noticed how much they help. The scratching posts have just become part of our rooms.

List of scratch deterrents you can add to your furniture:

• double-sided sticky tape to sofas, chairs, and rugs (examples are Sticky Paws or Cat Training Tape)
• Sofisti-Cat furniture protectors
• aluminum foil (which doesn’t work on Walter, he loves aluminum foil and whenever I use a sheet in the kitchen he comes running to sit on it 🙂
• plastic rug protectors with spikes (put the surface with the plastic spikes up and place it over the part of the rug that the cats are scratching)

After a while, they usually get used to using the appropriate scratchers and you can remove the not-so-nice looking deterrents from your home.

Trim nails regularly

Clipping your cats’ claws regularly isn’t just important for your furniture but your skin as well 😉 When I hold my little ones and they jump off, I often end up with scratches on my arms or stomach. This is when I know it’s time for a trim again.

Some cats are easier to handle than others for a nail trim. When everything fails, I wrap them in a blanket to get the job done. Please make sure that your pet nail clippers are sharp and that you don’t cut into the sensitive part of their nail. Every human knows how much it hurts to cut a nail too short. So I usually just cut the sharp tip to be safe.

Willy is the worst in our family and gets quite angry when I trim his nails. I try to do it in stages and give him a break when he gets too mad. I also always reward with treats to try to give them positive feedback.

If clipping fails, try nail caps which can make a huge difference. I have never needed them though.

 

Keep expectations realistic

I use my common sense when searching for home decor for our house. I don’t buy things that get ruined easily. My rugs can handle the occasional scratching and so can my seating arrangements. I pretty much stopped buying things that couldn’t handle a busy family and pets. for example, our living room area rug has worked so well for us and the cats for 6 years now and we still love it.

And our fireplace swivel chairs are distressed leather. A new scratch here and there will make no difference.

In all honesty…like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, accidents happen and I have numerous areas in our home where there are scratches on our nice pieces of furniture. And I can live with that. When I’m not on top of their nail trims, the sofa has to suffer. Especially in the areas on top of the sofa which you can see in the below photos. It’s the spot that our cats use to enter their cat enclosure.

Click on the below triangle in the image to see a video of my cats enjoying their catio:

Yup, that’s my sofa! But this is my fault that the furniture looks like this because I wasn’t consistent with their trims and all they were doing is coming and going. This isn’t done because they are mean spirited and wanted to destroy my furniture. I certainly could have avoided it.

I am aware that most longtime cat owners know about the above-mentioned suggestions already but it is definitely what has worked for us. It shows in our home that we have a system that works because I feel like I have accomplished having a beautiful home with several happy and busy cats.

You can check out all my favorite cat products by clicking HERE.

If you are new around here, then you might also like my cat enclosure posts:

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Tschüß,