Train Your Cat, Save Your Furniture, and Your Money

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Train Your Cat, Save Your Furniture, and Your Money

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

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.

There is a reason your cat scratches the furniture and you will need to understand that reason. It's not a question of your cat not having a taste for your furniture, or that your cat wants to irritate you. Cats simply love to scratch. You can't stop a cat from scratching because it is a natural behavior for it. You can train your cat not to scratch your furniture by giving it something else to scratch instead.

Scratching is important to a cats health. When a cat scratches, it is exercising its muscles. The paws of a cat contain scent glands, which leaves their scent on objects that they scratch. Cats need to scratch for claw health and keeping them nice and sharp, for when you annoy it. Obviuosly there are reasons as to why a cat needs to scratch. Instead of preventing this type of behavior, it should be encouraged, although on your terms.

When your cat scratches your furniture, don't even think about punishing it. Cats will not respond to punishment and will increase your cats problems. Your cat will try to stay out of your way all the time if you try to punish it in any way. 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. Even better would be to have more than 1 scratching post, as this gives your cat plenty of options. Cats can be trained at any age, but the earlier you can start, the quicker and easier it will be.

Try to place the posts in areas that your cat likes hanging out. One of the best places to place a post is near where your cat sleeps. A good scratch and a good stretch is cat's first port of call after it wakes up. I think we all share this particular trait. Once your cat becomes used to using scratching posts, it becomes a habit, and cats are creatures of habit.

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 decides that it wants to use your lap for a bit of a snooze, it will be handy to have a scratching post nearby when it decides to wake up.

Making a scratching post familiar to a cat is the best way to get it to use it. Try playing with your cat by moving string up and down the post, so your cats claws come in contact with it. You could tie some of your pet's favourite toys onto the post, this will encourage your cat to make contact with the post with its paws. These easy techniques will allow you to train your cat so that it no longer uses your furniture for scratching.

Make sure that the scratching post is not too short, and make sue that it is firmly in place. 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.

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