help - Cats destoying carpet on stairs

kazzpop

Hi there,
My two cats, love doing their nails on the stairs. I tried spraying them with water gun, but it doesnt stop them.. i have put orange and lemon juice around the area to no avail.. Our stairs is bald there is patches of carpet at the bottom of the stairs nearly every day and its me who is always picking it up... I am tempted to get the stairs boarded up and have a wooden stairs, but with cost a factor- i am not too sure - Any ideas how to deal with the problem both cats are house cats and are the monsters of our home.... in other words they are spoilt rotten! Any ideas will be appreciated - thanks !

bunyip123

I would try to get a scratching post and set it up nearby the stairs for now, when they start to prefer the post you can move it somewhere more convenient. To be honest I find the ready made 'posts' in shops are not sturdy enough, some of them fall over when the cat scratches/pulls at it, so the cat looses interest fast.

I find the best thing is some thick rope from a garden centre, and wrap it real tight around some wood and nail it in. It's tough, sturdy, and good texture that the cat really loves to dig nails into. Alternatively, a good big thick bit of wood - cats will always check out something new and hopefully thy will prefer it to the carpet.

SMK

I had the same problem. I bought a repellent spray in the pet shop and sprayed the bottom steps of the stairs where they scratched most and I also bought a catnip spray which I sprayed on a scratching post which I put beside the stairs. The downside is you have to respray every 24 hours and after a few days wooden stairs were sounding like a very good idea, despite the cost!! But within a week the cats stopped scratching the stairs - it was obviously just enough time to break their habit of doing it. The sprays I bought were made by Four Paws. Hope this helps.

MsFifers

I have good tall scratching posts too, and they do the job fine. I also got some scraps of carpet from a friend who was redecorating, and left them down for the cats to scratch instead. The under-side of the carpet was great for them. They are pretty good at not scratching the furniture now - apart from one chair that I have given up on!

kazzpop

thanks for the advice, have tried the posts before, one of the cats was afraid of it so ignore it and continued to use the stair the other cat showed no interest in it -
SMK
i think i will take your idea and try the spray.. and see how we get on.

Regarding giving them old carpet tried that too, they are just bold cats they ignored it and continued to pull at the carperts upstairs in the bedrooms. All ours beds are destroyed - the base of them, :eek:
We have leather furnture sofas, when we got them the guy in the shop told us that cats wont go near them, how wrong he was, our cats love sleeping on them.

DaddyOSphynx

Some cats like to stretch up and use a tall scratching post. Others like to stretch out and use a floor level flat scratching item. If you have 'horizontal' scratchers, try the flat scratching mats you can buy or plank style scratch boards/cardboard panel scratchers on the floor somewhere to help break the carpet habit.

I have used off cuts of carpet, turned upside down to reveal the hessian side and my cats adored it. I thought it might make them see all carpet as fair game but in my case anyway it didn't. They would make the offcut into a sausage shape and roll around 'disembowelling' it with their back legs. Very cute