hi guys,

we have recently redecorated in our front room and my youngest cat has taken to scratching on the new wall paper!! (he never did this with the previous paper and he has 3 scratch posts to choose from.)


does anyone have any experience, advice or ideas on how to get him to stop?


thanks

Maybe it's a different texture which is more appealing. And also as it 'smells new' he could be trying to mark his territory - both visually with claw marks, and also via the scent glands between his toes.

But whatever the reasons, what you want to do is stop him. You could try obstructing small areas of the wall with furniture, but that has limited practicality. The most reliable solution is to shut him out of the room unless he is supervised, and then stop him as soon as he starts (shut him out for a few minutes, then let him back in). Meanwhile you could also try a Feliway diffuser in the room, it can be helpful in stopping that type of behaviour.

You do need to stop him asap though, because the more he does it, the more he will do it - the scratch marks on the wallpaper will act as visual cues encouraging him to reoffend.

I feel for you OP.

I remember years ago decorating our bedroom, and the cat scratched the wall on the very night we had finished it. Luckily there was an easy solution - shutting the door.

But last year we wallpapered our hallway. The blummin cat scratched all of it. We couldn't stop her as she did it when we were out. Every single bit up the stairs and landing was scratched until it was bald. I would hoover up little bits of wallpaper constantly.

thanks so much guys

I will try putting on the feliway and putting him out the room when he does it.

I need the same advice, my little darling has taken to climbing on top of our aquariam where he torments fish, and also shreds our wallpaper. Is there anything that cats don't like? I have heard they don't like the smell of citrus stuff, is this true?

Apparently if you get double sided sticky tape or wire netting or Prickler wall strips and put these on the floor, where the cat’s back legs are while it scratches. (You can’t really put this on the wall!) Thus the cat won’t be able to stand in the place and therefore cannot scratch. You MUST provide an alternative scratching area otherwise it will just scratch on wallpaper elsewhere.

Citronella spray's supposed to work as well .

There is no good news on this one! Only way to avoid is to plaster the walls. Our two little monkeys would climb the walls and laugh at us whilst we watched in horror.

We had success stopping our cats scratching our bookcase by using a brightly coloured water pistol.

The cats only got wet once.

After that, we left the water pistol on the book case in full view and the cats would sit on the bookcase, giving the water pistol the evil eye. Eventually the they stopped glaring at it and we quietly removed it. We haven't had much of a scratching problem since.

My cat did this when he was young. Not only did he scratch at the bottom, he also jumped as high as he could, bringing a strip of wallpaper all the way down with him.

Once he was over a year old and had matured a little he just stopped doing it. I've redecorated since and he's not touched it. He just destroys the back of the sofa instead.

He is still doing it but the problem is we have never actually seen him do it so have not had the chance to 'tell him off' for it!!

feel really bad about the new wallpaper

Problem solved then.