Pat, Cat & Dog

Posts Tagged ‘Cat Walk’

Is your favourite cat driving you to distraction by tearing up the legs of your favourite table or destroying the fabric of your favourite couch? Are you now starting to consider de-clawing your cat as a solution?

Cats love to scratch away, it’s quite natural for cats to do so and helps them shared some of the dead material on their claws. As well as that it helps them mark their territory by leaving small amounts of scent around the house. Because they don’t know that you have no intention of allowing rival cats to enter.

If you think you’ll stop your cat from clawing then think again. Being instinctive it’s highly unlikely that scolding him or punishing him or throwing him outside or smacking his paws will do much at all to stop him scratching. Do all those things and he will still tear up the legs of your favourite table and drive you to distraction.

Cat owners who reach the stage of realization that they are unable to stop the cat scratching the furniture sometimes consider de-clawing their cat. This is a surgical procedure where the claws, usually on the front legs only, are removed with part of the bones. It is expensive, it is extremely painful for the cat who needs to walk around on injured feet for a period of time whilst they are healing, and it also poses various risks to the cat.

Some of the most important things that cats do require claws. Your cat can’t play in trees if he can’t climb them. They use their claws when stretching, running and jumping and even digging in their litterbox.

And finally de-clawing your cat removes his most important weapon against dogs. Watch a cat defend himself against a dog and you will see he can very successfully do so using his claws. But not if he doesn’t have any.

There are some much cheaper and much less painful solutions to cat scratching than cat de-clawing. A cat scratching post can cost less than $20 and once you’ve trained him to use his scratching post your problem is over.

A cat scratching pole is a piece of dedicated cat furniture that is intended to provide him with a place to scratch where he can do all the damage he likes. Whilst it can sometimes take some effort to train him to use it there is no doubt that buying a scratching post and training him to use it is way less stressful and less expensive than serious surgery.

De-clawing is outlawed in some countries. It is a painful, expensive and unnecessary procedure, and the need for it can be obviated simply by buying and training your cat to use a proper cat scratching post.