Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-32595102-20170714190802/@comment-24577221-20170720173800

Pinacoin wrote:

That's why we can't have nice things...

There's a guy I know slightly, a friend of friends.

He has cats. He loves his cats.

His cats destroy his furniture.

I talked with him about that, a couple of years ago. "They're cats," he said. "What can I do?"

He could have his cats de-clawed. That's rather drastic, and a lot of people are fundamentally opposed to it.

He could use "kitty caps", which are plastic tips which are glued onto the claws and prevent them from catching on things. Cats tend to dislike them, and it's often a struggle to get them glued on, and they come off after a few weeks as the claws grow. One needs to redo them every month or so.

He could train his cats not to scratch his furniture. Squirt guns, spray bottles, super-soakers. Cats don't like that, either, but that's the point. This approach takes some time and consistent effort.

But his solution is just to never get any nice furniture, just old crappy stuff, so his cats can keep on shredding it.

I fundamentally disagree with his approach.

Our cat doesn't scratch things other than her scratching post. That's from our using kitty caps for a year or so, which got her used to not scratching stuff, followed by diligent work with a spray bottle. And that's a cat who is not very bright, even by feline standards.

I like having nice things, and I'm willing to put in some work to keep them nice.