Cat damaging furniture

[JDgreen227]

Guys, I have a 2 1/2 year old neutered male tabby cat who is gradually damaging the wicker framed furniture in my living room. He chews on the frames and has done a lot of scratching on the chair backs, and this is despite there being several scratching posts and cat towers in the room. I do not want to have him declawed...does anyone know of a solution I could spray on the wicker frames that would repel him? Weird thing is, the other 3 cats have NEVER touched the furniture. Thanks for any ideas.

 

[Don87]

Red pepper,Tobasco sauce, or spray him with a steam of water(squirt gun).

 

[MossRoad]

Ah, the joys of indoor cats. As a kid, my parents' cats did some serious damage to the woodwork with their claws. My dad's solution... replace the woodwork. :laughing:

I know several people that have a spray bottle and squirt the cat with water each time it even goes near a place they don't want it to. That does the trick as long as you are there. However, cats are very patient. They'll wait till you are asleep then claw away with great joy.

Kind like one of our "boys" that we never see on the kitchen counter. But when we come towards the kitchen in the middle of the night, we always hear a loud WHUMP! and he's siting on the floor in the middle of the kitchen looking innocent!

 

[JDgreen227]

Red pepper,Tobasco sauce, or spray him with a steam of water(squirt gun).

Yeah....but as Mossroad says, it is very hard to catch him in the act of vandalizing.....:laughing: would you think this innocent looking critter could be so destructive?

 

[jerry56]

Try a stuff called "bitter yuck" it smells and taste horrible to them but you can't smell it at all..well I couldn't, we used it on the Christmas tree....worked like a charm...if it is fabric there is a double sided tape thet won't harm the fabric but the cats hate it because their paws stick to it.....
lol...just saw your picture...a red...lol...no wonder...like this little bundle of cutness....I feel your pain

 

[IkeRoberts]

spray furniture with any citrus scented deodorizer. Cats hate citus and will stay away.

 

[strum456]

So, anyway- back to training cats. They sure are a lot tougher than dogs, aren't they. I grew up always having a German Sheppard. Now my wife and I adopted one of our barn cats as a house pet. His body language tells me "I know I'm being bad, but you can't catch me". He gets squirted multiple times a day. I think getting squirted is getting to be a game for him. I was about ready to hook a fence charger to the Christmas tree. That little jackwagon!

 

[Stimw]

I built a nice "A" frame scratchin' post for my two inside Kitties and once in a while I rub some Cat Nip into the carpet on it. Once in a great while I will see them scratch where they shouldn't and I tell them firmly DON'T SCRATCH!! When they are on the post I sometimes tell them very nicely, sugarly "you tear that thing down and I will build you another one". They keep scratching because they know the tone of my voice.
But don't get up to go to the bathroom or I loose my seat in the Lazy Boy!! see pic

 

[RobertBrown]

Yeah....but as Mossroad says, it is very hard to catch him in the act of vandalizing.....:laughing: would you think this innocent looking critter could be so destructive?

it is very hard to catch him in the act of vandalizing....

THAT'S what wives are for.....maybe you should get one....or loose the cat.

 

[MasseyWV]

Red pepper,Tobasco sauce

I tried a mixture of these recently and they actually attracted one of my cats, which eagerly licked it off. Who would have thought... a cat that likes hot sauce!

 

[/pine]

A little ammonia in the squirt bottle increases the effectiveness exponentially...!

 

[JDgreen227]

THAT'S what wives are for.....maybe you should get one....or loose the cat.

I just got RID of a wife...compared to my lazy worthless ex the cat is a saint...:laughing:

 

[jerrybob]

We've had lots of cats and dogs. As for cats scratching furniture......my experience is once they start....it's near impossible to prevent. How about making him an outside cat? All the sprays mentioned might work temporarily.....but he'll find something new to scratch which....most likely....will not be his scratching post. I don't like the declawing idea.....first it hurts like heck and second.....the cat can never defend himself. Good luck.

 

[brin]

Bill.....You can buy a scratching post at any pet shop and even Walmart has them ...it is like a 3ft. tall 4x4 mounted to a base and covered with a carpet like covering...or you could easily make one ...then the trick is to get the cat to use it instead of the furniture and you do that by buying catnip and putting a bunch of it in a blender with some water and emulsifying it and then brush it on the scratching post....your cat will love you long time for it....

 

[k0ua]

our cats seem to prefer a scratching post that I make over the carpeted ones. I take 2 x4's about 32 inches long then screw them together, to make the post, then screw that to a nice 3/4 plywood base after you cover the base with a thin low napp carpet piece. Also staple a piece of this carpet over the top of the post and down about 3 or 4 inches. Then get 50 foot of 1/2 inch sisal rope, fasten it with a cable clamp, to the wood, and continue to wind the sisal very tightly around the post coil over coil. You should wear leather gloves as you are pulling very hard on the rope to make tight coils around the wooden post. When you get up past the top carpet piece so that no wood is showing, then cut the rope and clamp it down tightly with one or 2 cable clamps. Now Kitty has something to really sink those claws in, and they much prefer it to the store bought carpeted scratching posts.. It wears a long time but will eventually wear out with daily use. you can save some rope by carpeting the lower part of the post and starting your rope higher up, depending on the size of your cats, it you have little ones, they will use the bottom portion, but a big ole kitty standing on his hind legs and stretching up needs to be able to reach up pretty high. You can see what they are trying to achieve with sinking their claws into something substantial (like the tightly wound sisal rope) as it pulls the outer worn layers of their claws off, exposing new freshly sharp (as a needle!) claw underneath.

James K0UA

 

[radioman]

THAT'S what wives are for.....maybe you should get one....or loose the cat.

uh oh .. now you have done it!

 

[Deere Dude]

We had a cat that would scratch on the back of oak chairs. I ties mouse trap wherever he had a tendency to scratch. It worked for me.

 

[MossRoad]

Yeah....but as Mossroad says, it is very hard to catch him in the act of vandalizing.....:laughing: would you think this innocent looking critter could be so destructive?

Nice feline. I got a thing for orange cats. Don't currently have one, but my last cat was a BIG orange tom American short hair. He would stand on the floor with his front paws on the edge of the dining room table and stair at your dinner plate. If you turned your head and he thought you weren't looking, he'd reach over and whack the food on your plate and knock it down for him and the dog. 37" from nose to tail. 17 pounds of muscle. I raised him from a kitten with a Cairn Terrier (like Toto). He thought he was a dog. I walked him on a leash! Folks at the vet's office got a kick out of it when I'd walk him and the dog into the office on leashes. All the other dogs would start barking at him and he'd look around like "whatcha barking at fellas?" When he was 15 he got diabetes. I had to give him insulin shots twice a day. I'd just throw a cat treat on the floor and grab the scruff of his neck and stick him. He didn't care at all. My daughter learned to give him the shots. He'd sit in my lap while I typed on TBN at night. He lived to be 17. I miss him. Burried him next to the Cairn. They were best buds. :thumbsup:

 

[MossRoad]

We've had lots of cats and dogs. As for cats scratching furniture......my experience is once they start....it's near impossible to prevent. How about making him an outside cat? All the sprays mentioned might work temporarily.....but he'll find something new to scratch which....most likely....will not be his scratching post. I don't like the declawing idea.....first it hurts like heck and second.....the cat can never defend himself. Good luck.

On the subject of declawing... it is really the surgical amputation of the first joint of the finger (or toe as we should call it). It is becoming less popular as it cropping of ears and docking of tails on dogs.

With that said, I grew up with cats all my life. None of my mom's cats were declawed. They pretty much destroyed the woodwork in the house. I still have scars from two of them. My sister had to give us her cat when she got married due to her husband's allergies. He was declawed on the front. He was also an outside cat. And, he could defend himself quite well. He ended up being the tough guy on the block and treed most of the neighbors cats many times. I think the other cats in the neighborhood were safer because he couldn't climb up the tree after them. He adopted my 98 year old grandma next door and would sit at the end of her porch with his back to her. She'd talk to him and he'd point his ears at her but never look at her. But if you wanted to find him, you just had to look for her. He was always around her. She said he was "on patrol".

The orange cat that acted like a dog that I mentioned in my previous post was declawed and an indoor only cat. He'd ride the cairn terrier around the house like a lion on a wildebest.

Our two current cats are indoor cats only. Both are declawed on the front. When they get a hankerin' to fight each other as brothers will do, they pretty much hug each other and kick the crap out of each other with their back claws.

I guess you'd really have to think about declawing a cat if you were ever gonna let it outside. I'll never let cats out again after seeing the crazy amount of kills they make even if they aren't hungry. We had a mean old cat that was 3 when I was born. She lived to be 21. I doubt there was a day in my life when that cat did not bring something dead to the house except for maybe the last month of her life when she slowed down. My mom's rationale for letting it kill so much was we'd be up to our eyeballs in chipmunks and birds if it wasn't for that cat.

I suppose if I had a farm, I'd have working cats to control rodents. But I see no need for them being let outside in an urban environment. A properly maintained house keeps most rodents out and any that might get in get turned into a hockey puck by indoor cats that don't know how to kill a mouse. :laughing:

 

[J_J]

Real simple, replace the cat or terminate same.