This Actually Decent-Looking Cat Scratching Post Saved My Furniture From My Kittens
Cats famously love (and need) to scratch stuff. When I adopted my two kittens at the beginning of this year, I made sure to provide them with plenty of places to scratch, in the hopes they would not destroy my furniture. The smaller post and scratching elements on my cat tree sufficed for a while, but as the kittens grew, my husband and I started to catch them with their claws in the living-room sofa and chair. I assumed they needed something taller — they like to stretch while they scratch — so my husband went to the pet store to get the tallest scratching post he could find.
He came home with the SmartCat Ultimate Cat Scratching Post, which we placed in our living room. Our cats took to it almost immediately. They stretched out long to sink their claws into the woven sisal, and eventually they even learned to climb it. Just I had hoped, they also stopped scratching our couch and chair quite so much.
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It turns out I stumbled backward into doing exactly the right thing for my cats. While reporting on the best cat trees, many experts I spoke to mentioned that scratching surfaces on cat trees aren’t always tall enough to fulfill a cat’s scratching needs. Cat trees are also often too large to place in “socially significant areas,” which is where a scratching post is most likely to see the most action, according to cat behaviorist Ingrid Johnson from Fundamentally Feline. “Cats scratch in high-traffic pathways where humans and cats pass through daily,” Johnson says. “They’re essentially leaving their kitty text messages behind,” Johnson adds, because when they scratch, they are marking the spot with the scent glands in their paw pads.
By placing my Ultimate Cat Scratching Post in my living room, in a corner near the couch and main hallway of the apartment, I had inadvertently chosen a socially significant area. And unlike a large cat tree, the Ultimate Scratching Post was easy to fit into the space while still providing an ample scratching surface. It’s 32 inches tall — the exact height Johnson recommends for a scratching post — with a wide base that keeps it from tipping. But at 16 inches by 16 inches square, the base still doesn’t take up a huge chunk of floor space. It’s extremely sturdy, too: No matter how wild my cats get while scratching and scaling the post, I’ve never seen it so much as wobble.
The scratching post also has a small platform on top, where I will sometimes place treats so the cats can scale the post to retrieve them. And I expect the sisal will be durable enough to endure for quite a while: Senior editor Michael Berk currently owns two Ultimate Cat Scratching Posts and told me that in his experience, they easily last seven to eight years before the sisal starts to show wear. (My sister and sister-in-law also have the same scratching post for their respective cats and have been similarly impressed.)
And even though it’s not as sculptural or design-y as some cat furniture, I appreciate that the scratching post isn’t garishly ugly. It comes in two neutral colors, gray and beige, which blend in and are easy to tolerate in common areas — a win-win-win for my cats, my couch, and me.
More cat stuff we like
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