Cleopatra - the holy terror of carpets

magycmyste

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Well, just the upstairs carpet right in the corners in front of the bathroom door, my bedroom door, and the second to top step of the staircase.

She's just over a year old now, and overall, she's a sweet, good cat. But lately, she's taken to scratching again where she isn't supposed to - on the carpet. Downstairs, she's been using the doormats as scratching pads since the day she got here - no problems for me there. I had originally gotten here a hanging scratching post upstairs, but she wouldn't touch it unless there was some catnip sprinkled on/rubbed in. She has a 55" cat tree that she loves, and has finally started scratching on. During the time that she refused to scratch there, I bought her an iScratch, which she also started scratching on almost immediately.

I thought the iScratch had finally solved her scratching on the carpet problem, but she's recently started again, and in those same spots. I'm a little worried that my dad is going to be really mad at her, since I think we were probably planning to sell this place after I graduated, and torn-up patches of carpet are not good for resale. I've tried covering those patches up with the sticky covers from the pet store, and I know she has plenty of legitimate places to scratch, so I'm at a loss to find a way to discourage her from scratching at the carpet (I'm tempted to try to rub some chili powder into those areas, but I'm not certain that would keep her away). Those patches are already pretty torn up - I'm just trying to figure out a way to keep it from getting even worse.

Help! Does anyone have suggestions?
 

howard

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I don't really have a problem with over-scratching.

But, my cat sure likes to scratch one particular carpet though.

It has a thicker fiber then the normal carpet.

She only seems to scratch it after she just ate or after her claws have been cut.

Maybe you could find a carpet that she will like to scratch the most and it will keep her away from everything else.
 

tigger_2801

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Jasper scratches all the time but doesn't do any damage (im not sure how he does it), but Delilah picks a certain spot and demolishes it. Like yours it always seems to be on corners. At the old house she had about 6 spots so it was really hard to keep track but this house has less corners and she only has one spot, so we've covered it over with a thick soft rug and that seems to have stopped it. We tried loads of other coverings but she managed to get them all up. This one seems to work though. You can also get sprays to discourage them from going certain places (it's called "Get off" I think).
 
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magycmyste

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Ooh! I forgot I had the bitter apple stuff! (I'd gotten it to keep her from biting things, so when she stopped doing that(mostly) I forgot. If that doesn't work, I'll try to find the "Get Off"...

I'll try it, and the rug as well, if I can find a small enough one (except for the staircase step, it's just the inner corners of the two doorways, so I'd think it'd be hard to find one to fit over that area. Maybe I'm wrong, though.)

Thanks for the suggestions!
 
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