Cats plucking stairs! Any way to stop it?

[Abihattie]

My carpet - esp. on the stairs is gradually getting ruined by the cats. Has anyone got it any tips to try & stop it? I've tried scratching post but they still prefer the stairs (angry)

My carpet - esp. on the stairs is gradually getting ruined by the cats. Has anyone got it any tips to try & stop it? I've tried scratching post but they still prefer the stairs!

You could try a citrus aromatherapy diffuser in that area - I have an orange oil one that has been reasonably successful in stopping mine peeing up the microwave

However, my carpets are shot to pieces now, along with my ageing sofa - if you have cats, you have to accept some "alterations" to your home I'm afraid - I'd rather have a raggedy carpet and two cats I adore than a pristine house and no pets.

I had this and made a scratching post to go at the top of the stairs, bought new stair carpet and then all was well. Having said this I think it was down to luck rather than a handy tip. The problem is that they've now made that bit of carpet smell of a scratch place and all the things that are supposedly good to stop this behaviour you really don't want to do at the top of a flight of stairs (e.g plastic or foil). Best I can offer advice wise is make it smell really bad...clove oil, citrus etc. The other thing is make sure your scratching post is tall enough, not one of those stupidly diddy comercial types (ours is about 3ft high!) they like to really stretch out when they scratch.

spray it with a waterpistle each time it does it. will associate doing it with getting wet and stop if you do it often enough. our cats never went upstairs as a result

cats don't like tinfoil, you could put some on their favourite scratching place for a bit to get them out of the habit

or staple an extra square of carpet to where they scratch and then your actual carpet underneath won't get ruined