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| Hero rubs his face all over his catnip-infused corrugated-cardboard furniture-sparing scratching station. Adjacent to his scratchy mat. Life is good. |
Horizontal, vertical, multi-levelled, tall or short: what
kind of scratching post do cats prefer?
Our friends at Companion Animal Psychology have shared
the news here.
The key conclusion?
“The ideal scratching post to recommend to a cat owner to help prevent inappropriate scratching is one that includes rope as a substrate, is upright vertical, 3 ft or higher, has two or more levels and a base width of between 1 and 3 ft.”
BUT…remember
among felines there is individual variation. For example, in our house, such
scratching posts are ignored. Especially if they were expensive (there seems to
be a rule with cats whereby their enthusiasm for something you buy for them is
inversely proportional to what you paid for it). Corrugated cardboard is all
the rage here, and there needs to be a lot of it (it’s also cheap which
confirms the aforementioned feline-onomics rule).
Mike and Hero
are also big time horizontal scratchers, so they dig shag pile rugs, scratchy
doormats and carpet. Because Michael is older and has a touch of arthritis, her
claws are particularly long and she gets them caught in things. I trim them
regularly.
