My cat a 6 year male keeps scratching our furniture. We've tried "sticky paws" electric pads and mouse traps. We've even had his nails covered with plastic caps but he removes them. What can I do?

That's a tough one. Lots of folks say that if you provide a cat with a scratching post, he or she will not scratch the furniture... however, I have found this to be untrue!

The only thing I can think of off hand won't be attractive, but it might work. Purchase some of those clearish, plastic rug protecters. I know you've seen them before, they look like plastic rug runners, and they have plastic "nubbies" that stick up on the surface. You can buy this stuff by the foot cheaply at Home Depot or Loews. Cats HATE the way the nubbies feel on their paw pads and will stay off areas covered by these. I would drape a sheet of this over the side of the couch, chair or whatever the cat happens to be scratching. I hope this helps...

My only idea is to get a scratching post.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Good Luck!:)

Sounds like a little Cat Scratch Fever. Sorry I couldn't help myself.

My suggestion is to get him declawed.

I used to have a simese cat or however you spell it and he liked to scratch things. We had him declawed and he was harmless to our furniture after that. A Scratching post is also a suggestion as suggested above.

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Originally Posted by howardschwartz

My cat a 6 year male keeps scratching our furniture. We've tried "sticky paws" electric pads and mouse traps. We've even had his nails covered with plastic caps but he removes them. What can I do?

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If you have a scratching post, get some Catnip and rub it all over the post. My cat was doing the same thing. The Catnip on the scratching post cured the problem...

De-clawing a cat is maiming in my opinion. Either find a new home for the cat or only give him unsupervised access to furniture it's okay to scratch. Use plastic like Ren said. Get him a couple of scratch things and direct him to them whenever he starts to scratch something valuable. Use treats.

The catnip on the scratching post idea and the is great.

Good Luck!:)

Joy

The plastic thing does work my cats hate it also I got hard plastic clear covers for the arms of the furniture worked great the cats got tiered of trying to scratch the plastic, they don't like it, my male tried to pry the plastic rug runner off until I used uplostry tacks to keep the runner on. Now I don't even have to cover my furniture any more(5 years later) Took that long for them to give up.

You can't just get the scratching post - you have to train the cat to use it. The catnip is a fabulous idea and it does help cause I've done it. When I got my latest new cat, fairly early on I put the scratching post on my bed (she was hiding in my room at the time), and put catnip on the base and the post thingy. She went nutso and suddenly that scratching post became her favorite thing. Not a bad idea to put some more on it occasionally.

Put the thing some place obvious and some place where he hangs out.

And you also have to scold the cat for using the furniture (squirt bottle, stern NO, loud clap, whatever), and then immediately take him to the scratching post. You can rub his paws on it in a scratching motion so he supposedly gets the idea. (I've never known that to work great but you can try.)

If he's difficult, you have to be that much more diligent about it. The catnip will definitely help him like the post better so that he'll more easily take to it. (Assuming he's not a weirdo like my one cat who actually doesn't care for the stuff. Gasp!)