Hi, everyone! This is my first post here. I'm a cat parent again after about four and a half years. My partner and I recently brought home a red point Siamese named Freja from a local rescue. She's been adjusting well. She is perfectly quiet during the night, sleeps on the bed at my feet, and lounges on the back of the couch while we watch TV. We have two scratching posts for her of different sizes, materials, and shapes, and she likes to use them.
However, there's one behavioral problem that we can't seem to solve. In the mornings just before I wake up, she likes to scratch at the corner of the wall where our bed is (but only on my side of the bed, not my partner's, and only in the mornings when I'm laying down). We live in a weird log cabin style apartment, so the walls are just stacked logs. I can understand how this material would be appealing for her claws, but this is the only place in the apartment where she scratches the walls. Additionally, we've provided a scratching post in our bedroom, and it's well used, so it's not like she has nothing available to scratch.
The other place she likes to scratch at is our coffee table. It doesn't matter what we happen to be doing in the room (watching TV, cooking, sitting and talking), she will walk up to the table, make eye contact with us, and reach up her paws to scratch at the leg of the table, and it's always the same leg! It's interesting to note that she doesn't earnestly scratch at it either. It's kind of half-hearted like she doesn't really have the urge to scratch but just wants to get our attention and knows she's not supposed to do this. She also has a scratching post in the living room.
She's not starved for attention (I just graduated college, so I'm home with her all day right now. We have multiple play sessions throughout the day), and we invite her up on the couch with us if she wants to be there. This behavior also isn't affected by feeding times as she does it whether she's just eaten or not. I've been searching for an answer to this behavior for weeks now, but nothing has turned up. When she does something we don't want her to do, we clap and say "No!" but this does nothing. I've also tried spraying the wall with a cat repellant, but it doesn't affect her.
While she's not being overly destructive, we're just frustrated and don't know what she's trying to tell us as it only happens under very specific conditions. I know that words like "taunting" aren't the right way to look at cat behavior, but I don't know how else to describe it. Thanks for any insight!
However, there's one behavioral problem that we can't seem to solve. In the mornings just before I wake up, she likes to scratch at the corner of the wall where our bed is (but only on my side of the bed, not my partner's, and only in the mornings when I'm laying down). We live in a weird log cabin style apartment, so the walls are just stacked logs. I can understand how this material would be appealing for her claws, but this is the only place in the apartment where she scratches the walls. Additionally, we've provided a scratching post in our bedroom, and it's well used, so it's not like she has nothing available to scratch.
The other place she likes to scratch at is our coffee table. It doesn't matter what we happen to be doing in the room (watching TV, cooking, sitting and talking), she will walk up to the table, make eye contact with us, and reach up her paws to scratch at the leg of the table, and it's always the same leg! It's interesting to note that she doesn't earnestly scratch at it either. It's kind of half-hearted like she doesn't really have the urge to scratch but just wants to get our attention and knows she's not supposed to do this. She also has a scratching post in the living room.
She's not starved for attention (I just graduated college, so I'm home with her all day right now. We have multiple play sessions throughout the day), and we invite her up on the couch with us if she wants to be there. This behavior also isn't affected by feeding times as she does it whether she's just eaten or not. I've been searching for an answer to this behavior for weeks now, but nothing has turned up. When she does something we don't want her to do, we clap and say "No!" but this does nothing. I've also tried spraying the wall with a cat repellant, but it doesn't affect her.
While she's not being overly destructive, we're just frustrated and don't know what she's trying to tell us as it only happens under very specific conditions. I know that words like "taunting" aren't the right way to look at cat behavior, but I don't know how else to describe it. Thanks for any insight!
