As an owner of a cat, one of your main priorities will be to train your cat to prevent it from scratching your furniture. Not only will this save you money and a great deal of irritation, you will also have a better relationship with your cat.

First of all you need to have an understanding as to why cats scratch. Your cat doesn't do this because it wants to annoy you, nor does it purposely set out to do this because it dislikes the furniture you have. Cats simply love to scratch. Scratching comes naturally for cats and they need to do it. It is not diificult to train your cat to stop scratching your furniture, all you have to do is to provide a substitue for scratching.

It is healthy for a cat to scratch. Scratching is neccessary for a cat so that it can keep its muscles in good shape. Cats paws have scent glands and scratching helps them to leave a scent in order to mark their territory. A cats claws are kept healthy and clean through scratching. As you can see, there are a few reasons as to why cat scratching takes place. Rather than trying to limit this cat behavior, you should encourage it, but on your terms.

The one thing that you should never do is to punish your cat if you catch it scratching the furniture. Cats will not respond to punishment and will increase your cats problems. When you punish a cat, its mind will just connect you with punishment, and it will start keeping away from you. If you shoo your cat away if you see it scratching your furniture, it will only carry on doing the same thing when you are not around. The one way to prevent a cat from scratching furniture is through the use of effective training methods.

The first thing that you must do when you get a cat is to buy a scratching post. It will even better if you can get hold of a few scratching posts, as this will allow your cat to have more options to scratch. Although a cat can be trained to use a scratching post at any age, the earlier you can start to train your, the better it will be for you, your cat, and especially your furniture.

The scratching posts should be in places that your cat likes to go. Try putting a post near the place your cat sleeps on a regular basis. The first thing that a cat likes to do when it wakes up, is to stretch and have a good scratch. You could say that this is a trait that the rest of us share. Cats are creatures of habit and they can form the habit of using a scratching post pretty quickly.

The room where everybody sits together is another great place to position a scratching post. Cats do like to socialize with members of the family, even though at sometimes seems not to be the case. If your cat chooses to have a nap on your lap, a nearby scratching post will come in handy.

The best way to train your cat to use a scratching post, is to make it familiar to your cat. Try playing with your cat by moving string up and down the post, so your cats claws come in contact with it. Try tying some toys that your cat likes onto the scratching post, the enables your cat to touch the post with its paws and claws. Just by using these simple methods you will easily be able to teach your cat to use the post instead of your furniture.

Ensure that the post is pretty stable and of a good length. Cat training is not difficult if you use the right methods, and it is easy to train your cat to stop it from ruining your furniture.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Cat Accessories, Cat Breeds, Cat Health, Cat Names, General Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.