FAIL | Cardboard Claw Scratcher

Okay so I'm not really sure what the thing is called, but Emerald ignores it worse than she ignores me, so that's gotta be bad! When we got Emerald she had all of her claws. I was a little worried about this because I'd never had indoor cats and I'd always heard they scratched furniture. We had bought a new-to-us couch which was in great shape and I seriously didn't want it scratched up. We were told that Emerald was a good cat and hadn't scratched the furniture of her foster parent's home so I was less worried about this...we'll it turns out that she DOES scratch on furniture...

Autry & I were at WalMart shopping for groceries and the monthly round of kitty litter (I need to write about finding kitty litter, but that's a whole different issue) and we saw the kitty toy section. We were looking at these different things and saw this little box which was supposed to be something cat's would use to scratch on vs. using the furniture. Its called the Super Scratcher by Smarty Kat. It had catnip on it which was supposed to help them want to use the cardboard as their scratch board for their claws. We tried & tried, but couldn't get her to do anything to the $6 dollar box of cardboard except chew on it! I have to say that was a really frustrating since I already had problems with her chewing on cardboard boxes. Thank God it's just cardboard though and not something more expensive.

Emerald chewing on the edge of the box.

We have talked about having her front claws removed, but with moving to the country we were both concerned about her getting out of the house and then having no way to protect herself...so the claws are staying. I am just going to have to come up with something more clever to keep her from clawing up the back of my couches!