how to teach my cat to use a scratcher

Hello again!

I was wondering if anyone out there might have any ideas for teaching my grown cat how to use a scratching post.  I've bought two different types for him, one is a standard enough one and the other one is a big enough ball.  He's not that big into toys anyway - but he just looks at both of them going "and why would I be interested in these..?" - and then I felt like a total idiot physically putting his paws on them as he looked at me wondering what on earth am I trying to do or achieve.

He's an adult male cat who's spending more time indoors so I would like to look after his claws and I have sometimes seen that he does scratch a wooden fence we have outside.

He has little to no interest in cat nip as far as I can tell so spraying them with it I don't think would work.  And he is a rather nervous stray, so I don't think he would take too kindly to me clipping them.

Any suggestions..?

Thank-you!

I found this great TCS article which may help:

http://www.thecatsite.com/a/how-to-stop-your-cat-from-scratching-the-furniture

Thank-you so much HelloMissKitty - that's of huge help!

It seems I made page one mistake by placing her paw on it though...

Scraggles isn't much of a toy cat but there is one that he does sometimes enjoy - a kind of fishing line with strings coming out of it - so I played with that a bit on the scratcher - I'm not sure he was buying it - but as a fist step I was happy.

Unfortunately Scraggles gets nervous and is never fully at ease when playing and one of the scratchers made a bit of a bang as he pounced on it and the string so he ran off afraid - but I fed him some treats on it - played a little more then called it a day

I'll have another go at it tomorrow

Keep working with it. Scraggles will figure it out [emoji]128522[/emoji]