My babies are all pretty good about not destroying things, except for Ming. Ming is my resident scratching machine. ANY surface in my house has felt the wrath of his claws and he just cannot resist chewing on anything plastic. Since he is a fairly lazy cat, not to mention LARGE, I just put most of my thing up where he will be too lazy to climb. I can't leave plastic laying around anywhere for his sake and my couch is denim, that holds up to long, sharp, Siamese claws pretty well. I know your frustration. I would leave paper bags and milk bottle tops out during the day. They can amuse themselves for hours with those.