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Cat destroying rug! Need help!
Hi all. I do a lot of lurking here, and I finally have a question I need help on. I have a cat, who is 10 years old, and is destroying an area rug. We originally had carpet and recently put in hardwood, and I put down a beautful and sort of expensive area rug down under the dining table. The living room, which is open to the dining area, also has a rug. The problem is, as soon as we had the expensive rug down, he immediatly began clawing at it. He doesn't touch the less expensive rug. He will run around like a crazy nut (he may be 10, but acts like a very young cat) and then start clawing at the rug. We have two scratching pads/posts and he uses those all the time. But he also uses this rug.
I don't know what to do to get him to stop. Will Feliway work in this situation?
Re: Cat destroying rug! Need help!
Yikes! That's very frustrating!
It might be a tad annoying for you all for a couple of weeks, but is there any possibility of putting down those big double-sided sticky strips that are supposed to deter cats from clawing things? If it's an area of the rug that he's clawing up that you can avoid walking on, I'd suggest doing that to see if it turns him off to the area.
Likewise, it might look a little ridiculous to you guys, but you can try plunking a new scratching post down right where he's clawing the most, and do some positive reinforcement training to get him to go for the post rather than the rug. This literally ends up looking like:
You: ::scratch:: at the post and make it look like the most awesome thing ever. Rub catnip/spray catnip spray on the post to make it more appealing than the rug.
Cat: See how much more awesome the post is and wants to use it.
You: Give him treats/pets/praise/whatever floats his boat whenever he goes for the post and not the rug.
Also, try to catch him and spray him with a water bottle. Hopefully the unpleasantness gets associated with scratching the rug and he stops.
GL!
B/w 1/8: betas 17,345, progesterone 25.6
Do you clip his nails? Does he have a nice scratching post? These two things combined will prevent most all clawing and scratching.
To clip the nails you just cuddle him up in a blanket. Buy the small nail clippers from a pet store and just clip off the very tips. It makes them dull and relieves his wanting to scratch. I do mine every week or two, depending when they get sharp again.
A nice sturdy sisal rope scratching post is a must for any cat. Not the cheap ones at the pet store, you should be paying upwards of $30 and it should not bend or tilt when the cat is scratching. You can make them really cheap with a two by four and a spool of sisal rope from home depot. You can look up a diy on that. If he isn't interested at first then rub some catnip on it.
Best of luck!
I had a lot of luck with training my cat. There's a book on Amazon about clicker training your cat, and basically it's like Pavlov with positive reinforcement. You click every time they do a good behavior (you work on one behavior at a time) then they get a treat. They then associate that good behavior with the treat. This method has solved a ton of issues with my cat.