Cat proofing? Does it exist?

[SpongeBobJudgeyPants]

Trying to help out SDD who is in rented accomodation. Naughty mogs are scratching the wallpaper on the stairs etc, and apart from re doing the wallpaper every week is there anything that would make it more difficult to scratch/or not show, that wouldn't be difficult to change back at the end of the tenancy? I suspect the Feliway spray would damage wallpaper, and she has the feliway plug in which hasn't made a difference. Is it just impossible to stop, and wallpapering is the only viable thing? I'm hoping you cat people can come up with a solution that I haven't thought of! TIA.

I have cats and they don’t scratch walls, do they have a scratching post? Or play area to distract them from clawing other things? I didn’t find feliway helpful either I would also keep them away from an area they damage, they dislike tea tree and Lemon so something with that scent near the area they claw?

Yes to scratching post. The tea tree/lemon sounds like it's worth a go, thanks.

Or put catnip on the things you want them to scratch - an old rug/cardboard box/cat tree/scratching post.? Sort of carrot and stick approach!

do you need to have wallpaper? I have cats and don’t have wallpaper in the house at all. You can get done textured paints that look wallpaper like.

I have throws and plastic covers on the sofas, scratching posts with cat nip beside the sofas and they still find the bits of the sofa that are exposed and scratch them. Cats are arseholes! Some scratch some don’t

Oh dear, I think some cats just like wallpaper. Ours did despite loads of scratching posts and pads and outside logs. She never went for the carpets or any other wallpaper, just the stairs at top and bottom. She used to tear it off with her mouth. We ended up living with it until she was pts from illness and then we redecorated.

Hardware cloth? It's not the best method and it's ugly but comes in a huge roll. The holes are small. You just hang it with a command hook at top and bottom. Hooks come off clean and after a week or so the walls will lose instrest and you should be able to pull the cloth down... mabye vicks vaporub on the baseboards ( they hate the menthol smell

I had a cat at uni. Thankfully my walls were white woodchip which my cat loved to scratch but because of the woodchip, I just painted over the area and it wasn't noticeable.

Our current cat has ruined carpets scratching. Plus she is really picky on litter tray cleanliness and will just wee and poo next to it! We have had to replace downstairs carpets with wooden flooring.

We do find the felliway plug in helps though.

I'm going to look at tea tree and lemon scented sprays as well.

Thanks all. Will look into suggestions. DSD doesn't have much choice about decor, as it's rented. The hardware cloth sounds interesting!