Scratching post slivers

People sometimes ask whether their cats will get slivers from clawing Natural Scratch. My reply is that in the many years we have been using white cedar posts with our cats and selling them around the world, I have never received a report of a cat getting a sliver. Nothing can be ruled out entirely I suppose but experience indicates it is extremely unlikely.

I'm reminded of this because we have an outdoor table made of redwood. We've used the table for at least twenty year. It's showing its age so for the last several years we kept it on our enclosed porch. Redwood is a soft wood, too, and we allowed the cats to claw its legs. Unlike white cedar, it produces fairly sharp splinters. Nevertheless, we haven't noticed any slivers in our cats' paws.

Clearly, the pads on their paws are extremely tough, almost like the thick leather used on the soles of shoes.