Define the Territory: Set the Cat Scratch Tone

"Domestic cats are flexible on territory and it depends on us."

We love this statement by Michael Broad at Pictures of Cats. We refer to territorial signaling and marking regarding scratch behavior and established scratch practice. Territorial signaling is a cat's way of communicating their presence in an area, creating boundaries, establishing personal space within an open or contained environment. Domestic cats introduced into a new home environment will make attempts to discover their place through exploration and in response to the following: interactions with other home inhabitants; safety, security, and sustenance (sleeping quarters, food, water); activities of daily life and environmental enrichment.

As a cat, I will use various communication methods to demonstrate my intent. I'll meow and reveal body language to receive food, treats, affection, interaction. I'll scratch to show you the perimeter, areas, and various locations that I have claimed as my own unless you provide me with incentives that appeal to my pawticular purreferences; provide me with inspurration and show me the benefits of sharing space and responding to your cues; and demonstrate the function and utility of forming seen and unseen boundaries within a mixed species household. All home inhabitants have to discover their identity, purrpose, role within the family structure. Help your feline family members get acclimated by appealing to their sensibilities, the way that they see the world, their natural inclinations. Cats are highly intelligent. It has to make sense to acquire the cooperation of a cat. If it doesn't, forget about it!

So our role as the human who "brings home the bacon" and provides the means to sustain a healthy living environment in which all home inhabitants thrive in a state of harmony and interdependence is to establish multiple designated purrsonalized spaces within the home that compliment each family member and their individual and species-specific needs.

Spaces can also be defined by the type of activities that occur there such as eating, sleeping, playing, bathing, urination/defecation, etc. We found that when you create a space that incorporates the satiation of multiple needs...where activities of well-being take place on a daily basis such as sleeping, stretching, scratching, cats naturally leave their scent behind from contact with the surfaces encouraging them to return, repeat, and claim space. You can accelerate this process by introducing rewards and incentives that reinforce the desired behavior. Associations will begin to develop between purrleasurable experiences and space.

It's natural for humans to see scratching as an act of destruction especially when it appears to be occurring throughout the house or contributing to damage of home interiors. Although you may think that they're scratching indiscriminately, from their purrspective they are being specific, pawticular, deliberate and discriminate with where they place their scratch. They're simply attempting to find their way, determine their area, discover where they belong, allocate space, let other home inhabitants know they're there, map out a perimeter, define boundaries, establish an identity within the family unit.

We can help support and inspire the natural scratch practice by defining the boundaries with scratch incentives and observing the individual and collective purreferences of our feline family members for cues to guide our efforts. Everybody...every being...every family member needs a space or spaces within the home to call their own to create harmonious and mutually beneficial interactions.

Don't take the scratch purrsonally...put yourself in their paws and simply discover ways to inspire claws to designated surfaces.