How to Stop Your Cat from Clawing Furniture and Carpeting

Since cats are natural born hunters, they love to use their claws to scratch and anything and everything. They aren’t trying to be bad or destructive when doing this, but it is just part of their everyday investigation and playtime. The good news is that this behavior can be stopped. Here is how to stop your cat from clawing furniture and carpeting.

Determine their scratching preferences

Observe your cat and find out which pieces of furniture and areas of carpeting your cat tends to scratch at the most. Do they prefer to scratch at the living room sofa that is made from microfiber fabric or the den recliner chair that is crafted from leather? When it comes to scratching carpeting, do they prefer the dining room nylon carpeting or the master bedroom wool carpeting?

Provide scratching post that matches their scratching preference

Now that you have determined what your cat’s preferences are when it comes to scratching furniture and carpeting, you want to head to your local pet store and buy a kitty scratching post. For cats that like to scratch on furniture, choose a scratching post made with sisal material, which is rope-like. For cats that like to scratch on carpeting, choose a scratching post made with carpet material like textured or Berber. You want to place the scratching post in the area of your home that your cat likes to scratch the most. Show them their new scratching post and praise them when they use it.

Make furniture and carpeting unlikeable

While your cat has a new scratching post now, you still need to make furniture and carpeting surfaces unlikeable to your cat. If you can close the door to the room that they are scratching in the most, this is the best thing to do. However, if this is not possible, try spraying them using a spray bottle. You don’t want them to see that you are the one doing the spraying though. The idea is to get them to associate their scratching behavior with the blast of water from the spray bottle.

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