When Pets Scratch Furniture and Floors
Q: My cat and dog are wrecking my home! My dog gets the zoomies every evening and tears across my wood floors like he’s on fire. In just three months, he’s scratched the floors up where he makes hairpin turns around the stairwell and in front of the doors. My cat is well on her way to destroying my sofa, even though she has two scratching posts. What can I do when pets scratch furniture and floors? How can I keep them from trashing the place?
A: Trying to keep pets from indulging in their destructive sides can be maddening. After all, running, tugging, and pulling at things feels so good to them! “How can this be bad?” they must ask themselves. Scratching and damaging your home as they go isn’t malicious—they’re just following their instincts. Happily, you can try a number of options for avoiding (or at least minimizing) scratches before you throw your hopeless hands in the air. Here are some of the most popular and effective options to try when pets scratch furniture or floors.
Is Declawing Okay?
To get your pets to stop shredding, scratching, or chewing up your furnishings, you have to eliminate their ability to scratch, train them not to scratch, or make their destructive behaviors so unpleasant to your pets that they’ll stop doing them. Clipping claws back regularly works well, but many pets hate it, so humans often give up after trying just once or twice. Many of us fear we’ll clip too far and hurt our pets, and the little darlings feel that hesitancy and pull away. We put off clipping, and eventually we forget (or pretend we do), and the scratching habit returns.
So why not just get rid of the claws and eliminate the problem all at once? Well, that used to be a common decision. In past decades, many pet parents had their cats declawed. This eliminated cats’ ability to dig into floors and furnishings, but it also required painful and invasive surgery. As the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) puts it, “Declawing is the amputation of the last bone of each toe on a cat’s paw.” They say it’s “like cutting off your finger at the last knuckle.” Pretty horrific, no?
Even when done with lasers instead of a scalpel or guillotine clipper, it’s a painful process. The HSUS says it can cause physical and behavioral problems. These include back pain, litter box aversion, biting, bone spurs, and lameness. That’s why declawing is considered unethical and is banned in dozens of countries, as well as in several U.S. states and cities.
What about a tendonectomy?
Tendonectomy, another alternative, lets cats keep their claws but keeps them from extending them to scratch. But this involves cutting the tendons that control their claws, another nasty surgical intervention. What’s more, this procedure often makes the claws grow back thicker, making them harder to deal with. Thicker, stronger claws lead to increased snagging and often require declawing later. The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association found that the incidence of bleeding, lameness, and infection was similar between tendonectomy and declawing. Not a very appealing option, is it?
So that leaves us with the following, more ethical alternatives.
Provide Ample Scratching and Chewing Toys
Many pets who scratch will switch to scratching posts or corrugated cardboard scratching boxes. Some need a bit of coaxing—you might need to rub some catnip on the new scratching alternatives. My cats were bored by posts and refused to use them, but I’ve known several who love the cardboard boxes. Some even sleep on them when they’re not scratching. Placing a few of them around your home near furnishings that they tend to scratch is a good, inexpensive option. Corrugated cardboard scratching boxes designed for cats often satisfy the need to scratch, absorb cats’ scent (which they like), and are inexpensive and disposable. Just recycle and replace them when they look ratty.
Some cats who won’t use standalone scratching posts will use them when they’re part of a cat tree. These trees provide perches, ramps, hanging ropes to bat, or other toys to keep pets busy. They can be expensive and bulky, though, taking up lots of space. If you have room but little money, you can score a used tree online. Often young people in cities with large college-age populations move and can’t take pet trees with them. Around the end of each school term, it’s easy to find them for small change, or even for free.
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Looking for fabrics, furniture, and flooring that will stand up to pets’ scratching and pet hair? Check out our related article, Best Upholstery and Flooring for Homes with Pets, for lots of helpful tips.
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A Room with a View
For many cats, climbing on furniture is a way to get higher off the floor and improve their views of the outside world. But once they’re up on the sofa or chair, they decide to scratch, too. A cat tree with tall areas to perch on provides an incentive to get comfortable somewhere other than on your expensive upholstered furniture. Hanging wall- or window-mounted platforms also provides cats with visual enrichment that helps avoid restlessness and keeps them off of floors, away from children and other pets.
When pets scratch furniture or floors, they’re not always cats. Dogs and smaller pets with sharp claws can also shred furnishings surprisingly effectively. When pets scratch furniture or floors—especially if they’re dogs or rodents—they may be bored or anxious. They might be trapped inside a small space that they want to escape from. Many dogs have dug their way right through the linoleum floor when left closed up in a bathroom or laundry room for a few hours. Providing them with plenty of walks, toys, and other enrichment activities throughout the day often minimizes or solves the problem.
Dogs often like to be up on a sofa or chair, and will often pull themselves up onto them. This can damage or soil a chair’s seat or cushions. If you want to let them continue using your furniture, make sure to put sturdy fabric covers or cushions over the cushions they’re tough on, so they only damage fabric that you can easily swap out or wash.
Train Pets to Avoid Scratching or Jumping on Furnishings
This option is the hardest, because it requires that you change your own behavior, too. When pats scratch furniture, you have to consistently remove them from the furnishings they want to spend time on. You also have to divert their energies when they’re zooming around your home, usually by taking them outside and giving them more exercise. You’ll probably also need to research methods of training your pets, and possibly take them to classes.
This may involve a greater investment of your time and energy over the long term. While it’s good for your pet (and probably you), you have to be honest when you ask yourself whether you’re willing to commit to making those changes repeatedly, every single day, for weeks or months until your pets follow your lead. If you’re not, that doesn’t make you wrong or bad. But it does mean you need to come up with other strategies to save your furniture and floors now, before they get damaged.
Give Cats a Positive Alternative—a Parkour Wall
Are you industrious? You might enjoy setting up a cat runway or climbing wall. This lets your cats walk, pounce, escape kids, and vary their views throughout the day and night. When pets scratch furniture, they’re often just bored. Providing enrichment for them that lets them jump around and expend energy can be a great option.
Some catwalks, cat stairways, and wall-mounted cat shelves are quite attractive, and provide entertainment for both cats and their humans. They may also lure cats away from your furniture. You can buy wall-mounted shelves or boxes and build your own modular cat climbing wall. Or look on Instagram for inspiration and to find designers who can help you create a pleasing cat environment for your home.
It may not be practical to create a whole parkour course in your home for dogs. However, giving your dog a good workout running up and over stairs, benches, or ramps will tire your pup out more. This usually makes dogs less fidgety, anxious, and destructive when they get home. And that means they’re less likely to scratch, dig, chew, or engage in other damaging behaviors around the house.
Make Things Bumpy, Lumpy, Sticky, or Stinky
The easiest route to take is usually to make continuing their destructive behaviors really unpleasant for pets without making your own behavior toward them scary or mean. This usually involves covering or obscuring areas that pets want to engage with, or making them unpleasant to touch or smell.
Make your home bumpy and lumpy
When pets scratch furniture, they’re seeking a satisfying feeling. If you change the smoothness or texture of the things they usually scratch, you can often stop the behavior. Pet-repellant mats with bumpy or spiky plastic surfaces work on countertops, tables, above cabinets, and on upholstered furniture. You just place them on top of or affix them to the sides of furniture or floors, and your pets learn from experience to avoid them.
Sticky situations
Some pets need extra incentives to stay off tables and counters. One option is to stick double-sided tape on your furniture’s front and top edges. Most pets hate stickiness and will quickly adapt to avoid places and things that are sticky.
Test tape in an inconspicuous place to make sure the furniture’s finish won’t peel off with the tape. And don’t leave the same piece of tape on for more than a week. This can mar the finish. Need something stickier that average double-sided tape to stay in place and stand up to movement? Sticky Paws strips or other specialty cat tapes might work for you. Sticky Paws are made of odor-free medical-grade adhesive.
Stink up the joint
You probably won’t want to use your counters and tables if you have to make them sticky to keep pets off them. So if your cat scratches the front or sides of furniture, or your dog climbs up on it, you might instead try pet-repulsing sprays. If the spray provides an annoying odor when pets scratch furniture, you give them a strong disincentive to come near it again. Some are unpleasant to humans, too (especially those that use vinegar, ammonia, or alcohol). Many, however, are made with citrus oils, which most pets can’t tolerate, but which don’t bother most humans. Bark-stopping dog collars, for example, often spray citrus-based sprays when dogs bark, which usually stops them in their tracks but causes no lasting misery.
Sprays aren’t effective for all pets. However, you can still use pets’ sensitive sense of smell to stop bad behavior. Place organic matter that pets find stinky under your sofa or chair to keep pets away. For cats, these include citrus peels, lavender buds, rosemary, geranium, eucalyptus, thyme, pepper, mustard powder, curry, cinnamon, mint, pine, or extracts from these botanical sources.
Avoid spraying perfume on furniture, though. Some cats (even big cats like tigers) like it and will seek it out. (Apparently, they especially like Calvin Klein’s Obsession.) Also, perfume’s essential oils can stain fabrics or woods, or damage paint or varnish.
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em . . .
If nothing else works, using washable, soft barriers can save your furnishings and floors from damage. You can place area rugs or rug runners (or even plastic runners) on floors that get a lot of action. These are especially good for areas where pets run around corners quickly, or where they gather and scratch, such as around doorways. Covering sofas and chairs with removable specially made covers, or just with washable throws, gathers pet hair and dirt and keeps them from scratching the fabric. Just remove them when company comes over and replace them promptly as soon as company leaves. If pets drool or leak, use a waterproof mattress protector over your upholstered furniture.
To keep beds clean, cover each quilt or comforter with a large, clean sheet to catch fur, soil, or flea dirt. Wash the sheet weekly. You might even match the pattern of the sheet to the comforter underneath, so that the sheet isn’t so noticeable.
At top:
Petrebels for Unsplash
