House Cat Training: Dealing with Furniture Scratching

Does your cat scratches your favorite beautiful furniture? Well, scratch is part of your cats life. Your Cat's instict commands the pet to scratch in order to be comfortable and feel good. Is there any house cat training method to prevent or reduce scratching?

First lets see why cats need to scratch on furniture or objects. It's because they need to replace the outer sheath of their claws with a newer claw. And a brand new claw is one of the most importand things for your cat.

So how to you train your house cat to prevent scratching?

1. One method suggests that the cat's claws should be tipped with small plastic caps which are glued to the claws. Of course the cat will never stop scratching but using caps is a good house cat training method to prevent damage when your cat scratches something.

2. Another good practise would be to make use of scratching posts. You can buy a scratching post from any pet store. Put the post near the place where the cat usually takes a nap. All cats love to scratch after a good sleep.

3. Do not yell at your cat or punish it in any way. Never hit your cat! As I said earlier the cat scratches by instict and cannot associate your punishment or hitting with the fact of scratching. There are people who perform de-clawing for aesthetic or shelfish reasons. Of course I would never recommend such a violent method. This has nothing to do with house cat training.

4. Another not so nice house cat training method to prevent scratching is to use repellants. You can buy them in any pet store. Spray the repellant strategically on places that are likely to be scratched by your cat.

5. A similar method is the use of double sided sticky tapes. Stick pieces of the tape on the furniture and your cat will stop scratching. But would you like your furniture covered with sticky tapes?

6. It's a fact that cats don't like the smell of citrus. In fact they hate it. So a good house cat training practise would be to spray some lemon juice on certain targeted areas where your cat is about to scratch.

These are some of the house cat training methods to prevent your cat from scratching your favorite furniture or objects. I hope you found the information worth reading.