How to Keep Cats From Scratching Furniture – 6 Things You Should Know
How to keep cats from scratching? Training and a few accessories could serve as furniture protectors from cat scratching. Have you ever come home to meet your upholstery badly scratched or the doors in your house marked ruthlessly?
Cats will scratch your carpets to relieve themselves from stress, massage their muscles, or sharpen their claws. But if you do a few things right, you can correct and redirect the cat’s behavior to other things, such as the scratch post. This article provides you with guides on effective furniture protectors from cats scratching.
Table of Contents
- What Causes Cats to Scratch Furniture?
- How to Keep Cats From Scratching Furniture
- How Do You Train a Cat To Stay Off Furniture?
- Furniture Protectors From Cats Scratching – Final Thoughts
What Causes Cats to Scratch Furniture?
Scratching is part of your cat’s behavioral makeup, they just can’t help themselves. It is important to understand the psychology behind your kitty’s act so your can help redirect the scratching habit to only where you want them to scratch.
Cats love to stretch
Throughout the day, cats love to stretch. If you have noticed, when your cat wakes up from a nap, they usually have a big stretch. While they stretch, their ligament is equally stretched and they equally sharpen and scratch out their claws while they stretch.
Get a scratch post or a pipe cleaner toy which is an effective furniture protector from cat scratching that you can keep around your cat’s napping spot, and also redirect their scratching habits.
Scratching Keeps The Claws Healthy
The claw of a cat and even your fingernails are made of a protein called keratin. Claws, unlike our fingernails, peel off like onions(in layers). When your kitty scratches, those layers come off, leaving behind a sharp, shiny, new claw.
When your cat’s claws are sharp, it becomes easy to catch and kill prey. Cats can be savages when they interact with prey like roaches and mice; they can scratch and bat the roach until its carcass is scattered. The bottom line is to get your cat to exercise its claws healthily without destroying your carpet, doors, or furniture. Which you’ll soon discover how to do.
Cats Scratch When They are Excited
When your indoor kitty sees something that excites it outside like other cats, birds, or animals, you will notice not just an abnormal scratching behavior, you will also see your cat run from one room to another room while being so vocal. This act is crucial to expend energy developed while your feline friend sees a thrilling thing/animal but can’t interact with it directly.
To directly stop this habit from destroying anything important like your carpets or furniture, you may consider keeping scratch posts close to the window and doorway.
To Mark Territory
Cats are quite territorial, their scratching behavior helps us understand this better. Your kitty will likely scratch the door, furniture, litter box, doorway, and trees at the entrance of your house. Not only is this intended to leave claw marks, but scents are also equally deposited.
Other animals or cats will see your kitty’s scratch marks and equally smell your cat, this gives them the message that this territory is occupied already. Likewise, in a multi-cat home, the resident cat will try scratching most places in the house to mark his territory if you bring home a new cat. Get them individual scratching posts and encourage them to use them, and introduce the cats properly.
Yelling at your cat or sprinkling water to repel the scratching behavior will only make the cat upset and even confuse it. Instead of the above, you should observe and understand why your kitty is scratching abnormally.
Cats will scratch your furniture and appliances when they lack things to scratch. If your cat scratches your door, furniture, and your bed, keep a scratch post close to your cat’s favorite clawing area. You can even throw in a cat tree and an exercise wheel.
How to Keep Cats From Scratching Furniture
Cats scratch for a variety of reasons, including to stretch their muscles, to mark their territory, and to relieve stress.
While it may be tempting to declaw your cat, this is a painful and unnecessary procedure. There are several ways to keep your cat from scratching your furniture, including:
Make The Furniture Less Appalling
Cats are attracted to furniture for a multitude of reasons. A cat may scratch your furniture if he finds crumbs of food on the furniture.
Remove blinds: To keep your cat away from the furniture, if you have window blinds close to the upholstery, keep them shut always.
Keep your kitchen surfaces free from food particles and other debris that could attract your kitty.
Providing your cat with a scratching post
Scratching is a natural behavior for cats, so it’s important to provide them with an appropriate outlet. Scratching posts come in a variety of materials, including rope, carpet, and sisal. Be sure to choose a post that’s tall enough for your cat to stretch fully and that’s stable enough that it won’t tip over.
Positioning is also important, if your cat scratches your furniture, you should place the scratching post close to the furniture. Likewise, if your cat scratches the door, wardrobe, or anything else you should place the scratching post there.
Applying double-sided tape or Sticky Paws
Cats don’t like the feel of sticky tape or Sticky Paws on their paws, so this can be an effective way to deter them from scratching your furniture. Try not to place this tape on leather chairs as it could leave a nasty residue.
Trimming your cat’s nails
Regularly trimming your cat’s nails can help to prevent damage to your furniture. You can do this yourself at home or take your cat to a professional groomer. Beyond damages to your furniture, you will likely get injured if your cat jumps on you.
Several spray Deterrents
There are several spray deterrents on the market that can help to keep your cat from scratching your furniture. These sprays usually contain citrus or mint, which cats don’t like.
With a little patience and perseverance, you can train your cat to scratch a scratching post instead of your furniture.
Start Young
When the brain is young and adaptable, it is easier to form habits. If you’ve recently adopted a kitten, now is the time to get her a good scratching post and teach her not to scratch the furniture.
While an older cat can be taught new tricks, it is simply easier to work with a kitten.
However, because clawing behavior has a strong territorial component, you should focus on redirecting it in an adult cat as soon as you adopt one.
When the cat is new to your home, she does not have established scratching habits. If you provide the proper setup right away, you have a better chance of convincing that cat to only use the scratching post.
How Do You Train a Cat To Stay Off Furniture?
Training a cat may not come off easy as training a dog as they are not so given to exercise and training( this is dependent on the personality and cat breed.) Let’s get on with the training.
Positive reinforcement
Whenever you need to train your cat to do something or stop doing something, your main priority is positive reinforcement. Let your cat know what you need him to do, and if he does it, reward him. Punishing your cat will only make things worse.
Negative reinforcements like swatting, yelling or sprinkling water can instantly make your cat distrust you, making him fear you which could lead to behavioral problems.
Concentrate on proactive measures like keeping scratch posts close to places where your cat scratches. Also, positive reinforcement will make your cat stop scratching the furniture in no time.
Train The Cat With A Clicker
Target stick and clicker training can be used to train cats to move on commands. Clickers can be found in local pet shops. The target stick is practically a long stick effective in guiding your kitty off and on surfaces. Any stick will do just fine.
Teach the cat to follow the stick: To begin, the I’m of this training is to get your cat to follow the stick. You want to keep the stick close to your cat’s nose and let your cat sniff it, while it starts sniffing it—moves the stick, if your cat moves with the stick, click the clicker and give your cat some treats.
Choose a command: pick a command you can use that will let your cat know it’s time to get off the furniture. Command line “Get off” or “No”. You want your kitty to stop scratching in response to the command.
Guide the cat off the furniture when saying the command: whenever you see your cat on the furniture, use the training stick to remove its claws from it while saying the commands. Reward the cat if they follow suit.
Furniture Protectors From Cats Scratching – Final Thoughts
To keep your cats off the furniture and to prevent your cat from destroying your carpets or leaving their mark on the door, you need to redirect their energy or train them not to scratch on your furniture.
This training will be effective to deter your cat from a host of things. So, if you get it right, you can stop your cat from doing other undesirable acts.
