Why does a cat tear at the fabric of your
favourite chair?
The usual answer is that the animal is
sharpening its claws. This is true, but not in the way most people
imagine. They envisage a sharpening-up of blunted points rather in
the manner of humans improving the condition of blunted knives. But
what really occurs is the stripping-off of the old, worn-out claw
sheaths to reveal glistening new claws beneath. It is more like the
shedding of a snake's skin than the sharpening of a kitchen knife.
Sometimes, when people run their hands over the place where the cat
has been tearing at the furniture, they find what they think is a
ripped-out claw and they then fear that their animal has
accidentally caught its claw in some stubborn threads of the fabric
and damaged its foot. But the 'ripped-out claw' is nothing more
than the old outer layer that was ready to be discarded. Cats do
not employ these powerful 'stropping' actions with the hind feet.
Instead they use their teeth to chew off the old outer casings from
the hind claws.
A second important function of the stropping
with the front feet is the exercising and strengthening of the
retraction and protrusion apparatus of the claws, so vital in
catching prey, fighting rivals and climbing.
A third function, not suspected by most
people, is that of scentmarking. There are scent glands on the
underside of the cat's front paws and these are rubbed vigorously
against the fabric of the furniture being clawed. The rhythmic
stropping, left paw, right paw, squeezes scent on to the surface of
the cloth and rubs it in, depositing the cat's personal signature
on the furniture. This is why it is always your favourite chair
which seems to suffer most attention, because the cat is responding
to your own personal fragrance and adding to it. Some people buy an
expensive scratching-post from a pet shop, carefully impregnated
with catnip to make it appealing, and are bitterly disappointed
when the cat quickly ignores it and returns to stropping the
furniture. Hanging an old sweat-shirt over the scratching-post
might help to solve the problem, but if a cat has already
established a particular chair or a special part of the house as
its 'stropping spot', it is extremely hard to alter the
habit.
In desperation, some cat-owners resort to
the cruel practice of having their pets de-clawed. Apart from the
physical pain this inflicts, it is also psychologically damaging to
the cat and puts it at a serious disadvantage in all climbing
pursuits, hunting activities and feline social relationships. A cat
without its claws is not a true cat.