From Squidoo.com..."Make Your Own Cat Trees, Towers, and other Cat Structures"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Make Your Own Cat Trees, Towers, and other Cat Structures

http://www.squidoo.com/Make_Cat_Trees



Cat trees, condos, and scratching posts can be some of the most expensive items you ever buy for your cat, but they really enrich the lives of our feline friends. They give them places to play, areas to claw, and perches to view their territories from. Cats without these things are really missing out, and you are too, since watching them enjoy their trees and condos is great fun, plus it saves your furniture from being used instead.

Though cat structures are pretty expensive, depending on quality and size they can run up to hundreds of dollars, it's not always necessary to spend that much on them. With even the barest of carpentry skills you can build your own, and make them designed with your house and cat in mind.

# Making Cat Scratching Posts
# Making Cat Condos
# Making Cat Trees
# Making Cat Houses
# Making Outdoor Cat Play Areas
# Making Other Cat Items
# Building Basics
# Make Your Own Cat Toys

Cats Need to Scratch



Cats are designed to use their claws quite often in the wild to catch food, defend themselves, and defend their territory. Being housepets does not make a cat's claws grow any less or need to be used any less. Cats, physically and psychologically need to use their claws and use them often.

If they don't have cat trees and scratching posts that they like, they will scratch up your furniture and anything else that satisfies their natural need to claw. It is something that you just have to deal with if you decide to have a cat, it's part of what makes them a cat and there's no way to prevent them from it, even "declawing" them by removing their fingertips (cutting of the section that grows their claws) does not remove the obsession to claw, it just makes it irritating to painful for them.

That's why it is so important to have at least a few scratching posts around, it gives them something else to redirect their scratching urge toward and may prevent them from scratching your furniture up in the first place.

[Curmudgeoness]

1. Great idea. These things are outrageously expensive.

But I will disagree with the pitch about declawing cats makes it irritating for them to "claw". My cats are declawed and knead all the time as if they are scratching. If it was painful at all, they would do much less of it. Declawing isn't something that I would want to do to a cat, but these cats came to me that way and I see no issues with it for them.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

2. My mom had her cats declawed...

...they did suffer. She said she'd never have it done to a cat again. After they healed, they did indeed scratch as if they still had their claws. The claws are a cat's defense mechanism...they don't know how to intellectualize losing them. But like every cat has its own unique personality, I'm sure every cat adjusts to the surgery differently. But you were fortunate to get them post-surgery.

My cat is extremely cool about not touching furniture, etc. I have a scratching post but what she really likes are the cardboard "flats" at the bottom of Arrowhead Water 28-count bottles.

If I take half the bottles out and set the flat and remaining bottles on the kitchen floor, she has a makeshift scratching post that she loves. She invented it...I just started setting the water there and one day I heard "POP POP POP POP POP" and she was going to town. The full bottles keep it weighted down so it doesn't slide all around while she's scratching.

:-)

[Curmudgeoness]

3. Yep, my old cats LOVED cardboard. But they also loved

all the furniture, even with several scratching posts, etc. My cats are totally indoor, so don't need to protect themselves from anyone but me (giving pills, baths, etc), and I am not concerned that they can't scratch me. But don't think that a declawed cat is helpless---they learn to use those back claws. I broke up a cat fight between one of my old cats and a declawed neighborhood cat, and I was mangled.

But I am sure that I could not stand to do this to a cat myself. It has to be painful when it is done. Like cutting our fingers off at the first knuckle.

[david13]

4. I would certainly rather have my cats scratch up and ruin the furniture, rather

than have them declawed.
I recognize that is their purpose in life, to claw things.
dc

[Amerigo Vespucci]

5. I had to put a sofa and a love seat out of their misery

I had two cats for 15 years...indoor cats, with claws. They died a couple of months apart, both from age-related illness. One of them scratched the furniture and could never be broken from that habit, the other never touched it. The arm rests on both the sofa and love seat were shredded. I loved that cat more than I ever loved that furniture. It didn't make me happy that he did it, but it certainly did make me happy to have him in my life for 15 years.

:toast: