I know there's been a lot of threads tonight, and I don't know if everyone can keep up with them all, so I decided to add one more for y'all!!! LOL
Anyway, Sophie (who is almost 4 months old now!!) scratches EVERYTHING. She pulls at the carpet with her claws - so much that she's actually pulled it up a little from the corners by a few doors!! She scratches our bare walls (which is the most AWFUL sound you'll ever hear, like fingernails on a blackboard). She scratches cardboard boxes. She scratches the carpet around her food bowl every time she finishes eating (marking her territory?). She scratches like CRAZY in the litterbox (which is fine with me as long as she's going in the box!).
She's not too bad at scratching the furniture, though...her main passion is clawing at the carpet under her feet, wherever she may be!!
Now, the first thing everyone is going to say is, she needs more scratching surfaces, and I agree with that. She and Tito currently have 2 scratching posts in my one-floor, 1100 sq. ft. apartment, and we're building a cat tree this weekend (yay!! finally) and I'll be covering at least one post with sisal rope. I play with her as much as I can to exert her energy, but with kittens I don't think that ever happens.
As for stopping the behavior, I've been working on it since I moved in with my boyfriend and Sophie, about a month ago. I usually clap my hands and say "no!" if I catch her in the act, then pick her up and move her to the closest scratching post and put her paws on it. I praise her for using the post, and I encourage her to play on it by putting toys on top of it for her to bat off. If she repeatedly is scratching something, I'll give her a quick shot in the hips with a squirt bottle filled with lukewarm water. And I trim her nails regularly, about once a week or every ten days.
Anyway, the scratching doesn't bother me all that much. It's not bad...now. I just don't want it to continue. So, my question, after all that rambling is this:
Is she scratching because she's a crazy little kitten, and will it calm down when she grows up more? I never noticed Tito doing it this much. Has anyone else every had a cat that does this? Is it just a kitten thing?
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