How To Keep Your Cats From Destroying All Your Stuff

It’s been a while! Things have been happening! I bought a house! (Hence the radio silence for what seems like an eon… at least for me.) I’ll dive right into the meaty bits of our topic today—our furry little destructo-bots—but hang around until the end if you want an update on life in Why Cat HQ (aka my house).

With the incredibly stressful purchasing and renovating of our little fixer came the sudden realization that I now own things that I’d prefer my cats not destroy. Like, a couch that’s not from craigslist. Or houseplants that aren’t hand-me-downs precariously clinging to life. I’m a full-on grownup, y’all. I have houseplants and upholstered furniture. And heathen fur kids.

On the topic of cat claws…

We’re about to get obnoxiously preachy for just a second, so feel free to skip right over if I’m preaching to the cat choir. Or if you just don’t feel like being preached at today. Once a week at church is quite enough, you say? I get it.

Rant begins:

Cats scratching can’t be helped. It’s an inescapable part of living with cats, as integral to the experience as cleaning out litter boxes and getting your face stepped on as you sleep. To those who think they can solve the issue once and for all with the dreaded declawing, let’s talk. Declawing isn’t about as bad as having your fingernails ripped out. It’s worse! In declawing, a cats’ distal phalanges, or the end bones in their toes, are amputated, comparable to having your fingertips chopped off behind your first knuckle. The recovery process is long and incredibly painful, and many cats suffer from phantom pains for the rest of their lives. Others lash out and become biters, as they lack claws and feel unable to defend themselves in stressful situations.

You can probably guess my personal stance on the matter. In general, I have a very pronounced distaste for humans who feel the need to harm or otherwise
“modify” an animal to better suit their lives. I firmly believe that we are only guardians of the creatures in our care—we don’t own them, and they certainly don’t exist solely for our pleasure. We hardly deserve to have animals as our companions, but I think we should spend every day endeavoring to earn the privilege.

Rant ends.

 

Prevention

Before we get into prevention, we have to first accept cat scratching as an unavoidable behavior that nearly every cat will engage in—it’s cathartic and therapeutic and relaxing for them, all at the same time.

The number one thing you can do to prevent inappropriate scratching is to provide plenty of appropriate alternatives—not just one scratching post shoved in back room. Try to vary your scratchers by material and orientation, since some cats prefer sisal and others prefer cardboard. Some enjoy tall vertical scratchers, while others are more horizontally-inclined. Hey, if you want to encourage good behavior, the alternatives need to be legitimately appealing!

At the minimum, keep one in every room you frequent, and ideally in close-ish proximity to the furniture you’re trying to protect. My cats like to stretch out and scratch as they follow me from room to room, so I make sure that an appealing, officially-sanctioned scratching spot is always readily within reach when they enter a room.

From there, there are a few tricks you can employ to protect your furniture and discourage cat infringement. The easiest method that I’ve found involves heavy duty packing tape. Whenever I bring a new and enticing piece of upholstered furniture into the house, I wrap the corners with clear packing tape, like so:

 

    

The best part of this is how subtle it is (in person, you kind of have to squint at the edges of the couch to see the tape in action). If you wrap your corners neatly and with sturdy packing tape (heavy duty is best), it lays smooth and undisturbed for months.

It’s great to do this as soon as you bring in a new piece of furniture. If your cats never get to associate the furniture with scratchiness, it’ll be easier for you to maintain that status quo.

After a few months (the longer, the better) of tape-wrapped corners, you can remove the plastic little by little without your cats being the wiser. Try not to freak out if you remove it too early and your cats have a slip-up. Just snip any loose strings and re-wrap! A few loose threads on your couch does not portend the end of days.

Pro tip: Cats naturally gravitate towards upholstery with chunkier weaves. If you’re shopping for cat-proof furniture, run your fingernails across the fabric. If you feel lots of little ridges and resistance, your cats will be more prone to scratch it. A great material that most cat claws can’t get purchase in is velvet. I have a single velvet chair in my livingroom that my cats—blessedly, mercifully—completely ignore.

 

Redirection

For more permanent protection and appealing-scratching-alternative in one, I’ve had incredible success with this little contraption:

Sofa-Scratcher Corner Protector

Ours tucks under the leg of our bed and protects my precious non-craigslist upholstery. This kind of scratcher is the most effective when the area is just too appealing for your cats to resist, like protruding corners, or in tight spaces where a conventional post would take up too much space.

My cats are absolutely obsessed with it. It’s been the ideal pre-bedtime spot for them to smear up against, scratch, and hump in blissful adoration. And since it comes in a range of furniture-friendly colors, it has the added benefit of not making my eyes bleed. Which is important.

Take it away, Pips.


(It also comes in squared corners:)

Sofa-Scratcher Squared

 

Here’s another heavyweight favorite in my house—one that many of you are probably already familiar with. It takes up a bit more space, but serves as a great household “Scratch Central” and can take a beating from even the most avid scratch connoisseur:

SmartCat Ultimate Scratching Post

 

For those on a budget, I’m a big fan of IKEA’s self-wrap sisal cat scratchers. I think they’re currently only $6 in store, and you can use them to convert any table leg or stair railing into a quick and easy scratcher. They’re also fantastic for laying over the tops of couches (another popular scratching spot), windowsills, or tossing in random rooms where you simply cannot cram another stick of cat furniture.

 

Here’s Pippin graciously modeling one of his:

Having these laying around in all your cat’s usual haunts is an extremely effective furniture scratching deterrent. When given the choice, cats will almost always rather sink their talons into nice rough sisal over a linen couch.

Remember, curbing destruction requires a two-pronged approach: Prevention (tape up your corners!) and Redirection (have appealing alternatives within paw’s reach).

 

What about plants?

Ah, yes. The irresistible (and toxic) cat salad. You’re not alone—my cats like to eat my plants too. Fortunately prevention in this regard is a fair bit simpler.

Specifically, just elevate your houseplants out of the reach of your little turds. That means plant stands and windowsills are your friend. Lots of plant stands.

Left stand is IKEA. Right stand is Homegoods, the motherlode of plant stands.

 

Smaller plants can be perched on a windowsill with a barrier protecting delicate leaves from a kitty’s fiendish maws. I like to leave enough space on the sills for the cats to climb up and look out the window, but always with a wide, heavy barrier at the end of each row of plants.

Jars of marimo moss balls work great for this purpose (and are almost as cute and fluffy as our fur-burgers themselves).

Drat. Foiled again.

 

The cutest cat barrier that ever was.

 

When a plant is simply too large and heavy for a plant stand or windowsill, use natural cat deterrents like lemon to ward off your sneaky snackers. Prepare a few lemon rinds or cotton balls soaked in lemon juice, and arrange them on your plant’s low-hanging branches or pop a few right on top of your potting soil. You can also spritz diluted lemon juice directly onto your plant’s leaves. One nibble will have your sweet little gremlin running for the hills. 

If you want to venture into proper plant/cat aficionado territory, familarize yourself with hanging plants—the ultimate in cat-proof greenery. I’m a big fan of air plants in hanging terrariums, trailing ivy and pothos, and kokedamas.

 

WhyCat HQ

If you’ve read this far, allow me to punish you with a brief update on life in the new house. The cats have adjusted swimmingly to their new digs, as cats do. They’re quite taken with stairs, and have added a stair-storming sequence to their nightly cat rodeo repertoire.

In the vertical space department, I broke down our old, slightly customized cat tower and repurposed the perches into a series of wall-mounted cat shelves, with a sweet little honeycomb hideaway at its base:

 

Wall-mounted cat vertical space always seemed a bit more elegant to me. And I can do double back handsprings in the floor space we’re saving (just a very slight exaggeration). The DIY itself was super simple. I picked up a few shelf brackets from Home Depot and we were in business!

 

In more exciting news, I think I’ve finally cracked the cat bathroom conundrum and fashioned the most perfect and effortless litterbox (that isn’t an electric-powered machine) that ever existed. It’s essentially my previous sifting litterbox hack, with a few key upgrades.

We nixed the “Breeze Litterbox” system entirely (the side walls were laughably low, and even when surrounded by a large plastic tub, Pippin was still managing to pee over the sides and onto our walls. Furthermore, any urine that managed to stay within the outer tubs still sat festering in little pools at the bottoms until we could rustle up the courage to rinse them out. Which, honestly, wasn’t often).

Here’s what our old setup looked like:

 

And here’s our current:

You know you’re a proper cat nutter when the sight of a bespoke litterbox sends shivers of delight down your spine. Just me?

We nested two large plastic storage bins inside each other, with the interior bin’s floor cut out and replaced with 1/4″ galvanized hardware mesh. A tray slides into the bottom of the outer bin (through a cutout) to catch sifted litter.

I feel like this is finally maybe perfectly the END of our years-long journey in search of the ultimate smell-free, mess-free, easy-cleaning litter box solution. Read about all our previous litterbox iterations, frustrations, and interim solutions here. You’ll probably recognize a few of the issues we faced in your current fur-friend bathroom sitch and glean some useful tips. 

This current (and hopefully final) setup wasn’t exactly a simple DIY build. It involved lots of Dremel cutting and a ridiculous amount of hot glue to secure the steel mesh to the bottom of the sifting bin. But cleanup (and smell) has never been more pleasant. Thanks to the steel grate, broken down sawdust falls through to the bottom tray practically on its own. All we do each evening is skim off their poops (into another amazing odor-busting contraption, the litter genie) and give the wood pellets a quick and gentle stir. About once or twice a week, we dump the sawdust in the bottom trays into the trash. SO EASY. 

If you’re interested in seeing our DIY build breakdown, just holler in the comments.

 

Whew. How’s that for a comprehensive update? Anything I missed? Other than you guys? (I missed you guys!)

 

Read on:

Your cat is destructive in the knocking-things-over and climbing-inappropriate-things sort of way? Learn how to outsmart a mischievous cat

Check out a few of my favorite cat-centric DIYs

Now that your cats are leaving your precious furniture alone, let’s tackle that fur infestation

Pin it!

 

 

11 comments on “How To Keep Your Cats From Destroying All Your Stuff”

  1. hanna says:

    meow

  2. Michele says:

    I too would really love a breakdown of your DIY cat litter boxes! Especially including how you cut out the plastic bins without cracking them, as I have repeatedly tried to do this, to no avail! (Cracks and broken all over the place!) We have 9 cats, (Yes, I did say 9! And believe it or not, we’re more “dog” people than “cat”, but we currently have no dogs! Last dog passed 3/10/2023,and right now we just have more than enough critters to comfortably add any more! People need to stop abandoning cats!!) and have been looking for an affordable and safe way to ease the cleaning of the litter boxes, and effective ways to minimize odor.

    1. Why Cat Why says:

      Hello! Great question – use a heat gun or a hair dryer. Absolute game-changer! This video is great and explains the whole process: https://youtu.be/AbWUZYwYFN8?si=jBkEi8HjGe_o7LfZ

  3. Anna says:

    Hi there! I would love to see a breakdown of how you made your litter boxes, especially where you got the trays for the bottom. I’m considering attempting something similar for my senior cat who doesn’t always like using her current box. I was also wondering what the process of trying new litters was like and if you had any tips for a smoother transition. I love your blog and all the great tips I’ve found so far, thanks for the great info 😀

    1. Why Cat Why says:

      Hi Anna! Thanks for the comment. Switching litter has always been pretty easy for our cats, since they’re not fussy (which is an anomaly among cats). If they were, I’d just transition them super slowly and gradually. Start by mixing in a small amount of your new litter and very gradually increase the ratio of new/old until you’re using 100% new litter. The entire process should take at least 2 weeks–don’t rush things!

      The pans for the litter box we found at a restaurant supply store. Most, if not all, will carry these plastic or melamine trays (typically used for storing ingredients in industrial kitchens). I’ll work on an in-depth litter box build tutorial soon! I’m actually working on transitioning them to no litter pellets whatsoever (similar to Citi-kitty toilet training), so they go directly on the mesh grate and into the pan filled with absorbent crystals below. Will report back if successful!

  4. Dale says:

    Hi Why Cat Why, love your site!
    Awesome that you included the SmartCat Ultimate Scratching Post on this page. Best money I ever spent. It is extremely stable even with my large 16-pound Billy going at it several times a day, and as it has 31 vertical inches of sisal, he can stretch up his whole body. I have had mine for 3 years now with 2 cats going at it, and the sisal is so tightly bound that it is only now showing a bit of fuzz, which I trim with scissors. The post can be turned upside down when it starts to wear.

    While I’m at it and if I may, for those looking for joy in the litter box, the SmartCat All Natural Clumping Litter is the best product I have found on this planet. It is made from some sort of crushed grass seeds which absorbs liquid and scoops out like little rubber balls. As it is light weight cats don’t have to use their claws and the bottom of the pan is still like new, with no scratches that harbour bacteria. A fluffy bath mat deters litter scatter. I know, I sound like I work for SmartCat, but I don’t!! Cheers, and have a great day!

  5. The better suggestion will be not to keep your cat alone. On that time they are also and break stuff. And most of that they go out and get lost as well

  6. Jay says:

    Love the tips! My cat doesn’t scratch as much as he bites. He bites me for no reason. Sometimes when I’m working on the computer, or when I’m in/getting in bed. Sometimes he stalks me before he pounces. Sometimes he just walks to my leg and bites. He also eats chews paper, window blinds, and my metal bed frame. Any tips for these things?? Thanks!!!

    1. Why Cat Why says:

      Hi Jay! Sorry about your nibbly cat.
      Cover all your usual bases: Make sure he’s neutered. Make sure he has a very stimulating environment–invest in a cat tree and tons of catnip-stuffed toys, in various shapes and textures, rotated out frequently. Once you’ve provided tons of appropriate play alternatives, start nipping his bad behavior in the bud. Spray surfaces he isn’t allowed to chew on with lemon water. Get a separate spritzer filled with plain water and gently squirt him when he tries to bite you.
      Remember, only do this once all your cat-appropriate alternatives are in place (think toys, scratchers, climbers, perches).

      Make sure he’s entertained and getting all his needs fulfilled. If he’s a young cat, look into adopting a companion for him (with a slow and proper introduction). Best of luck!

  7. Bryan Kurtz says:

    Welcome back!! It’s great you see your delightfully fur-tile mind back in action!

    1. Why Cat Why says:

      Thank you! It’s meow-velous to be back :]

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