Training & Behavior

I bought the scratch post out of guilt, after she shredded the arm of the one chair I liked, and then she ignored it, the way cats ignore the sensible things you buy them, and kept the chair, which is the cat's way of negotiating, except she does the negotiating and I do the paying.

The post stood in the corner, unused, a small monument to my optimism, while the chair grew worse. I tried moving it near the chair, which the internet said to do, and she walked around it as if it were furniture, which it was, just furniture she had no reason to claw. The rub, I learned, is giving her a reason.

Catnip was the reason, but not the catnip I had tried, the dried strand from a bag she sniffed and walked past. This was fresh, crushed between my fingers and rubbed hard into the post, the oily sort that smells like a garden after rain, and she came over, suspicious, then interested, then rubbing her face on it the way she had never rubbed on anything I bought.

The scratch followed the rub. She dug her claws in, the post held, the chair was spared, and a habit that had eluded me for months arrived in one smelly evening. Cats are not stubborn, exactly. They are motivated, and I had simply been motivating the wrong object, the chair, by leaving it bare and beloved.

I kept it up. A rub every few days, the post kept in the spot she had chosen, not the corner I had picked, because the cat, not the owner, decides where the scratch post lives. Move it to where she already stretches, and the battle is half won before the nip is opened.

The chair is recovering. A throw covers the worst of it, and she has not gone back, because the post now smells like the best thing in the room and the chair smells like nothing in particular. I trimmed her claws too, which the vet showed me how to do without a fight, and the post takes the rest, and the two together ended the war I had been losing.

If your cat ignores the scratch post, do not buy a new one, rub the old one with something she actually likes, put it where she already scratches, and let her discover it on her terms. The post was never the problem. My failure to make it worth her claws was, and the catnip fixed what the corner could not.

The chair is a ruined thing, honestly, the arm a frayed memorial to the months I bought the wrong post and put it in the wrong place, and I kept it, partly from stinginess, partly because it tells the truth about who trains whom in this flat, and the throw covers the worst, and the cat has moved on, which is the point.

I have since rubbed the post after every hoover, the fresh catnip a small ritual, and she expects it now, waits by the post while I crush the leaf, and the chair is forgotten, which is the reward for the right smell in the right spot, and the lesson that the cat was never stubborn, she was simply unmotivated by the bare thing in the corner I chose.

A second cat at a friend's house ignored her post too, and I told the friend the trick, the rub, the move, the trim, and a week later a photo arrived of the cat on the post, and the friend called it magic, and it is not magic, it is motivation, and the catnip is just the honest bribe a cat will actually take, and the window-facing post was the one she wanted all along.

The claws, trimmed, made the post last, because an untrimmed claw catches and the cat gets cross and goes back to the chair, and the two habits, the rub and the trim, hold each other up, and the war ended not with a win but with a peace, the cat on the post, the chair under the throw, and me, finally, buying no more posts.

If your cat shreds the chair, stop buying posts and start selling the one you have, with the smell she wants, in the place she already scratches, and a trim so the claw co-operates, because the cat is not against you, she is for scratching, and your job is to give her a thing worth it, and the catnip on the post is the thing, and the chair can finally rest.

The cat is on the post as I write this, rubbing the face she rubs after every hoover, and the chair sits under its throw, forgotten, and the war is a peace, and the only thing I bought was a leaf, crushed, in the right place. The cat trained me, as they do, and the scratch post was hers all along, once I gave her a reason to want it.