Certain behaviors that are inherent and instinctive among cats can be incredibly frustrating. While you might love your feline friend unconditionally, coming home to find your sofa or your speaker system shredded can be downright disheartening. Fortunately, you may be able to mitigate seemingly destructive behaviors by simply having the right resources on hand. Following are some of the tremendous benefits that pet owners can gain by opting to invest in a scratching post for cats.
Minimize Behavioral Issues
While cats have been domesticated so much throughout the centuries that many live inside and even sleep right in bed with their owners, they are still animals at heart. As such, they operate far more on instinct than they do on rational thought. This can be seen in their bathroom habits. While covering waste with litter or sand seems like a perfectly rational way to quell odors and hide the mess, cats do it because it feels right to them. This same is true with scratching. While it makes absolutely no sense to shred a newly upholstered chair to pieces, cats know that scratching is somehow essential to their well-being and survival. Thus, when your kitty rips up your curtains, he or she isn't being bad. Your animal is merely acting on instinct.
Attempting to quell this instinct, like most pet owners do, can lead to a tremendous amount of frustration for these animals. For cats, scratching provides a remarkable number of health benefits. Scratching is to cats what digging is to dogs. Compassionate and committed dog owners do not attempt to stop dogs from digging, they simply attempt to redirect this behavior in order to minimize damages. If you have a cat in your home, you don't need to take steps to put stopping to an end like some annoying and unnecessary behavioral issue. You simply need to give your kitty an acceptable place to scratch so that he or she can freely engage in this natural and instinctual behavior.
Give Your Cat Better Claw Health
A scratching post for cats will do more than help you protect your cherished belongings. It can also play an important role in improving the overall health of your cat's claws. By scratching, cats are basically exfoliating or removing loose, dead layers from their claws. This is the natural way in which the feline species keeps its claws ready for action, which largely explains your kitty's instinctual drive to shred things up from time to time.
Let Your Animal Stretch
A scratching post for cast can be quite large. In fact, you may wander why some of these structures have such impressive, vertical lengths. They are designed to help cats stretch. Scratching is something that these animals often do while extending their bodies as far as the possibly can. In short, scratching and stretching go hand in hand and thus, the best scratching post for cats will be designed to accommodate and support both activities. It will also leave your cat feeling limber, healthy and relaxed.
Units like these are also a great source of exercise and entertainment as well as a sure form of stress relief. Investing in a scratching post for cats is an excellent way to protect your furnishings. It is also the ideal strategy for making your animal less tense and ensuring healthy claws and optimal overall health.
