Cat Scratching Becomes A Problem

Ursa Major wasn't my or my wife's first cat. Both of us had cats while living with our parents. We knew how they needed to scratch but were unprepared when Ursa starting clawing the mahogany moldings in the doorways of our 1953 house. A book about cats we had mentioned using cedar as a scratching post and we happened to be building a dock out of white cedar at a cabin on Bass Lake in Northern Wisconsin not far from where we Ursa found us. Bingo! He didn't go for it immediately but by using kitty treats as an inducement and rewarding good scratching behavior, he was soon clawing the dickens out of that first post. Not long after, we acquired a companion for him, Star, and she took to the cedar post quickly, too. This was the beginning of Natural Scratch.