Cats scratching fo attention, can I stop it?

[Sparrowlegs248]

2 cats. Old cat (10) and kitten (1). New baby. Soft touch husband......

They are allowed upstairs overnight, often sleep on the bed, esp old cat. We have a couple of issues. If i am up in the night with baby, kitten thinks its time to come alive and scratches at the foot of the divan bed. Lays on her side ripping shreds out of it. I am often feeding the baby. Husband leaps out of bed, shouts at cat. Wakes baby. (baby can feed in his sleep/very dozy)

She will do this from 2am. Husband gets up at 4. She wil do it after hes gone and its just me. It often results in her being shut downstairs.

Old cat gets up with husband and is fed and goes out. If its wet/raining, husband closes the door at the bottom of the stairs so i dont get soggy cats on the bed. We have a cat flap. Old cat claws at the door. He is scratching the paint and plucking the carpet.

What can i do to stop this? I am sure we had a spray when i was little to stop cats scratching but cant see anything in the petshop.

Cats have a good scratching post, they prefer the sisal door mat, a good natural garden with trees and a woodpile they scratch at. Plenty of toys. I play with them with toys on sticks almost every afternoon.

Relevance of soft touch husband.....they have him wrapped around their little paws. He complains that they're demanding yet is constantly letting them.in/out, there is a catflap. Feeding them in(separate food for medical reasons so can't leave it down) etc. They harass him. Not me!

I've never tried it but my friend put tin foil on all the things her cats scratched, they don't like it and stopped. Even after removing the foil they haven't gone back to those areas.
My cat was very jealous when our baby arrived, he got over it quite quickly though and they are friends now!

C
How quickly? Ds is 4.5 months. Not sure they are jealous as such - i am home all the time, they sit with me a lot. But i am often not in A position to stop them so its getting worse.

Might try tibfoil ......

He sulked when she was tiny and I was constantly breastfeeding and kept doing attention-seeking things like climbing up all the furniture.
After about the 12 week mark he got a bit more attention and settled back down to normal until she could walk and kept chasing him! She's 20 months now and he lets her stroke him.

Scratching is instinctive and very pleasurable for cats. You may as well try to get them to stop grooming, purring or breathing.

Cats most want to scratch right after napping, eating & relieving themselves. So you need a scratch-attracting feature near where they sleep-eat-litter tray.

There are videos where you can try to encourage your cat where to scratch by showing them how fun it is (honest). You pretend to scratch the scratch-tree & try to get cat to copy. I can verify this worked with Cat1 but not completely, he still likes to scratch other features. Cat2 is a numpty & didn't understand what I was doing at all.

Simple solution: both cats sleep elsewhere, shut in a room elsewhere in the house.... with an approved scratch-item.

Thanks Trout. They both know how Andaman where to scratch and use the post, door mat and logs/ trees. This is to attract attention, be let upstairs. They have access room the scratching items that they use to scratch but scratching those doesn't get us up!