Hey all,
I recently moved into my own apartment and to have a little company I was going to get a kitten. My old roommate had two and they destroyed the couches and the edge of his bed. I don't want to get the cat declawed but I was wondering if anyone had good advice on how to encourage the cat to only scratch its designated scratching posts etc. Thanks for all the help.

10/30/2009 3:30:40 PM

clip its nails regularly
rub catnip on its scratching areas
get a scratching toy it is actually interested in...a lot of cats love cardboard

10/30/2009 3:33:12 PM

Squirt Bottle.

10/30/2009 3:34:26 PM

10/30/2009 3:43:03 PM

10/30/2009 3:44:59 PM

declaw that shit.

10/30/2009 3:55:10 PM

I had a terrible experience with soft paws.

You can never get them entirely flush against their toes, so whenever my cat played with any sort of string/rope, she'd get it tangled between the soft paws and her toe. Then she'd freak, and run around with whatever the strong is attached to dangling by her paws. Seemed potentially dangerous.

Just get it declawed.

10/30/2009 4:25:53 PM

don't declaw, just trim them regulary and MAKE SURE to give them something they like to scratch. Give treats when they scratch the good thing and spray the living crap at them when they scratch the bad stuff.

10/30/2009 4:36:27 PM

Don't declaw the cat. If it comes down to that then just give the cat to a shelter. Declawing isn't just removing the claw, they actually have to cut through the last bone of each claw. It's like having all of your fingers cut off at the last joint. It's very painful for the cat and generally causes problems with arthritis later in life. Declawing is actually considered illegal and/or inhumane in many European countries.

10/30/2009 4:53:17 PM

^

10/30/2009 4:58:19 PM

that's bullshit. a kitten who is declawed will not even miss them after a few days.

10/30/2009 5:02:08 PM

Don't troll in the lounge

10/30/2009 5:11:49 PM

Don't declaw the cat

Beat the **** out of it.

Ok, so I'm kidding, and I'm not. I know it's not PC, but when I caught my cats clawing things as kittens, I would pop them on the backside. Not hard, but enough to know they had done something wrong. It only took about 3 rounds of that for them to catch on.

Later on in their lives, I took to trimming their claws... not for the sake of saving the furniture, but since they were still fighting once in a while and I wanted to minimize the damage to each other. It's not hard, and although they aren't happy about it, the cat will put up with it. I do it about once a month. Just make sure to have the vet show you how to do it the first time.

Finally, get one of these:

and put the catnip in it. I haven't met a cat yet that doesn't love it.

10/30/2009 5:12:11 PM

Quote :

"training a kitten"

does not compute.

10/30/2009 5:12:57 PM

10/30/2009 5:14:55 PM

Quote :

"Don't troll in the lounge"

if that was to me i'm not. i used to be against declawing cats, but i realized how much damage an indoor cat with claws can do to furniture, intentional or not, and their happiness is not affected. i guess you wouldn't want to get them declawed if they were outdoor cats though.

10/30/2009 5:50:58 PM

^Cats may be perfectly happy after a declaw. However, declawing can cause behavioral problems (litter box avoidance, biting, etc.) and can cause more severe arthritis. My gf has a declawed (back before people realized that it wasn't a good thing to do) cat that is as happy as can be, but he walks with a limp, hesitates to jump down from things, and keeps one foot off the ground when sitting upright.

[Edited on October 30, 2009 at 6:12 PM. Reason : ]

10/30/2009 6:12:26 PM

I'm personally a fan of cardboard & rope scratching posts rather than ones with carpet or fabric, just so they get the idea of what kinds of things they are rewarded for scratching, and what kinds of things get them sprayed with a water bottle.

10/30/2009 6:23:57 PM

declawing is to me the same issue as putting a spike in the ground and leaving your dog out all day on it

its something everyone did at one time and will probably be illegal one day

10/30/2009 6:29:41 PM

craptastic how the fuck was that a troll?

what i said was Why is it so important that Europe adopted the outlaw of declawing like we are just supposed to bend over backwards to "keep up" with them


thats all i said and thats trolling? motherfucker youre pathetic. its a discussion, i said in the thread that I agree about the declawing of cats

jesus


o my bad, its YOUR post...of course...still im askin you a question dude

I have a cat that i inherited from another owner that had it declawed and i regret that it was i just think a cat should have claws, if the cat gets outside id like her to have a fightin chance to get home and to be able to escape danger



but yet somehow im a freakin troll? get serious

[Edited on October 30, 2009 at 6:48 PM. Reason : f]

10/30/2009 6:44:31 PM

^I'm not sure what you're talking about. The only post I see from you in this thread is the one you just made. The troll post wasn't referring to you.

10/30/2009 7:04:00 PM

i figured you were a mod that deleted my post my bad

10/30/2009 7:07:07 PM

Quote :

"CATS: SERIOUS BUSINESS"

10/30/2009 8:07:27 PM

DO NOT DECLAW THE CAT

Take clear scotch tape, the kind that comes in the rolls like duct tape, and put it over the corners of the furniture you don't want scratched. Keep it there for a little while. There is something about the texture that makes the cat never try to claw it again.

keep a squirt bottle handy to spray it when it starts clawing something you don't want it to

put some change in a tin cup or can and shake it hard whenever it starts clawing

10/30/2009 8:51:34 PM

I'll clip my cats' claws when I remember, and so far I've had pretty good luck training them just by picking them up and moving them to a cardboard scratching pad thingy whenever I found them clawing at something they shouldn't. Sometimes I give them encouragement by kinda holding their paws and doing the scratching motion on it.

One cat will only scratch cardboard, the other will scratch that or the rope on his cat tree... that thing is tore up.

10/30/2009 9:07:13 PM

The cat will be fine if you declaw it......hotcurlz24 got her cat already declawed from a shelter and he is fine.

he thinks he is scratching shit all the time, (goes through the motions) but it does not work

10/30/2009 10:35:46 PM

declawed cats are fine. seriously. much better to get rid of the problem than to suffer literally thousands of dollars worth of property damage because you think the cat will really give 2 shits that it's claws are gone... if you get it done early enough they won't even miss them.

10/30/2009 11:02:27 PM

I've always heard that it was like cutting off their finger tips to declaw them, maybe they'll miss their fingertips maybe they wont, but at all the vet clinics I've worked at, most of the veteriniarians described it that way.



If one insists on surgery to fix a behavior concern, a tendonectomy is the way to go. It's where you cut the tendon so the cat can't extend the claw to scratch up stuff. It makes them just as useless as being declawed as far as if they were every to run out the door & end up outside where they might need claws, but apparently its less painful and much less invasive.

Also softpaws or whatever cat claw covers are called these days are another option.

10/30/2009 11:34:46 PM

those soft paw things always get caught in shit and come off. why fake the results that a little snip snip will ensure permanently?

i mean, when i was a baby the dr. did a little snip snip and i'm happy as i can be. (and generally more sanitary in that area because of it.)

10/30/2009 11:57:42 PM

Quote :

"Declawing is actually considered illegal and/or inhumane in many European countries."

yeah they also don't bathe on a regular basis in europe.

10/31/2009 2:19:38 PM

a buddy of mine has this done on his cats, but he said it was hard to find someone to do it.

Instead of declawing them, he had the tendon(s) cut. Im not sure how exactly it was done but the cats have their claws, just cant use them at all.

Personally I agree with all the training things said and trimming them.

10/31/2009 3:58:41 PM