This is about cat scratching.
Valley Girl (VG), in America, took a very nice picture of her super, rescued, polydactyl, smokey, female Maine Coon, Tootsie, with a ruff to match anything from 16th century Europe. She has the best ruff you’ll see on a cat but this post is not about Tootsie’s ruff, it’s about her claws. The picture VG took shows Tootsie using them against a scratching post and it gave me the idea for this picture post.
PoCers like to see claws particularly when they are used on a scratching post. If you have a nice picture of a scratching post or other scratching device being scratched please upload it in a comment. The instructions for uploading are below the comment box. If you have have the facilities to do it, please scale your picture to about a max of 640 pixels along the shorter length. If not don’t worry, just upload and I’ll do the rest.
The purpose behind this page is to promote the idea that there is a nice alternative to declawing your cat: buy a heavy, large, solid scratching post or scratching device – it can be horizontal. The larger the better because it won’t move when scratched and cats like a solid surface to scratch. A tree outside is what a cat would normally scratch.
Encourage your cat to use it. Place it at a strategic position. What is the best place for a scratching post? Please tell me, what you think. Somewhere prominent at a junction would be suitable, in my opinion. By “junction” I mean a place where different areas come together such as near the cat flap if you have a cat flap.
I say this because scratching is also marking territory for a cat (both visual and olfactory) and for wild cats a crossroads on trails within their territory or along borders of their territory are places where they can mark and get the message across most effectively to other cats.
Bryan and Ebony share The Watchtower but he’s still looking for Pandora lol
This is a cat scratch house cheese! I think it is Japanese. The photo is by jetalone
As for specific location, don’t think it would make much difference for Tootsie. She loves those carpeted cat towers so much… About the only suggestion I can think of is make sure there’s plenty of space around it… but I think anyone here would figure that out immediately.
Ah, Tootsie is so proud of herself! 😉
I bought one of those horizontal cardboard scratchers in preparation for adopting Tootsie. The “rental cat” I’d taken care of a few years before loved that item. Tootsie used it for scratching. But then I saw that carpet tower at a remainder store, and thought I couldn’t pass up a new thing for Tootsie. She loved it immediately- went at it with total enthusiasm. So, I went back and got another one. One upstairs, one downstairs. She lost all interest in the cardboard thing.
In some post or comment long ago, Michael pointed out that some cats are “vertical scratchers” whereas others are “horizontal scratchers”. Or, at least have a distinct preference one way or the other. I think it’s obvious which Tootsie prefers. I have a nice collection of shed cat claws from the towers or near area.
One thing to mention about the photo of Tootsie- she really isn’t a terribly fluffy Maine coon, by Maine coon standards. But, when she tears into the cat tower, she gets really fluffy. As in the picture. It’s as if she goes into “attack mode”, and irrc cats in general do “fluff up” to respond to threats, getting ready to fight back. Also, in the pic you can see that she has her ears back- again irrc what cats do in preparation for defense/ attack.
Of course she doesn’t see the cat tower as a threat. But, it’s as if some automatic cat behavior program is triggered, when she gets the claws out. Maybe she’s just practicing, or rather, keeping her cat self-defense abilities up to par.
This is the cheapest, easiest to prepare cat scratching horizontal post I have seen. The picture is by photogirl7.1
Bryan on The Watchtower.
Pandora, a brown tabby too, lived next door at the time and Bryan used to ‘sing’ over the fence to her from his perch lol
Sadly both are long gone now.