Furniture Scratching Kittie - need advice!

My 1 year old kittie Cassie's favourite hobby seems to be scratching our furniture to pieces. She's already wrecked the living room couch and chairs so bad my Mum's being forced to replace them. She also scratches beds and door frames.

We got her a scratching post several months ago and while she uses it a lot she still scratches the furniature a lot.

We have tried using a water squirter bottle thingy to punish her by spraying ever such a tiny bit in her face whenever she starts scratching the furniture and while she always runs away she also always returns to scratch again later. It has no real effect on her. Neither does light spanking or blowing in her face, or shaking newspapers at her. We've tried everything.

Does anyone have any advice on how to get cats to stopping scratching furniture for good? We are getting a new living room suite at the end of the month and would hate to see that one suffer the same fate as our current.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hi there-

First off please stop disciplining this cat in the ways described above. Those methods usually create more problems than they solve.

Your cat is doing what is natural to her, and she has no idea what is wrong with being natural. Cats scratch on solid objects to shed old nails, blunt their claws and stretch their backs.

You don't want to punish her, you want to reprogram her. You want her to scratch, but you need to show her where she can scratch. So you make the surface she has chosen a bit unappealing to her.

You can use those small helium filled balloons and attach them on a string. Tape the string to the line of the couch where she is scratching, and put a small fan near it to blow the balloons around. If she gets brave enough to go to them and start scratching, the first time one pops will be enough for her not to go back!

Is her scratching post steady enough? If it wobbles, she will go to something solid, like the couch, she knows that will not move.

Try buying different types of scratching posts. A turbo scratcher is one of my cats favorite ways to scratch.

You can also go to the scratch pads that lay flat on the floor

Is the post by a doorway- for some reason cats prefer scratching posts by open doorways.

If she is bonded to someone in the family they can leave one of their smelly socks near her scratching post to encourage her to use it.

You can buy sticky paws, an adhesive pad that sticks to your furniture and when the cat goes to scratch, it gets stuck momentarily and gets the message leaving fairly quickly.

Thanks very much, Hissy.

I'll be sure to try those suggestions.

Glad to help, just please put away the squirt bottle and the paper and don't tap her, not even lightly.

, just please put away the squirt bottle and the paper and don't tap her, not even lightly.

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Don't worry, will do!

We didn't think we were doing anything wrong by punishing her, we've known other people who've done similar things when their cats are "naughty".

But thanks very much for telling me.

You're welcome! And please let us know if any of these methods work for you.

Have you been able to stop your cat from scratching your furniture yet? I'm wondering because I'm writing an article on just that for a magazine and I'm looking for a real life story to be included in the article. If you have or know of anybody who has gotten their cat to stop scratching the furniture please email me right away. I'm running out of time and am not having much luck.
From all my research it looks at though you received great advice. If you're still having a problem try putting sticky tape over the surfaces where your cat is scratching or pin up an orange peel, they don't like the smell.
Thank you!

Tina, I wrote about my experience on this thread.

True Blue...the link above has a list of ways to get your cat to stop scratching the furniture (and other inappropriate places).

Good luck!

If that is not working, there is a new product on called soft paws. It is fairly easy to apply but they don't last forever so you would have to reapply again. The nails come in variety of colors. That is the best think, and they can't scratch your furniture.