I just got back from the supermarket where I bought a miraculous product. A carpet cat scratcher, designed to save all carpets, couches and similar surfaces from your cat’s claws. Well, I thought, great, this should work. I brought it home and unwrapped it first thing. I put it down carefully on a Sardinian bridal rug, a rather unique piece that I have had for many years and that is being scratched to bits, I am afraid. Two of my three cats, the main scratchers, gathered around it, sniffing it suspiciously. My male cat paused a couple of times to look up at me in bewilderment. What IS this thing?!, he seemed to be asking. Well, of course, since he is Italian, he really would have asked: “Ma che caspita è ‘sto aggeggio?” My youngest cat, Priscilla, who has torn up at least half of our possessions, started rubbing her chin all over it. Good sign, Margaret thought. Two minutes later, they both began batting the carpet-saver around the room, playing a cat game of soccer. Then Priscilla started gnawing on it. This phenomenal invention lasted about two minutes. It now lies half-destroyed on my rug, ignored by all. And did they sharpen their claws on it? Not once.
I love my cats! 🙂 
My cat chooses to destroy just one piece of furniture in the house, so I’m lucky. She has a few scratching posts, but I should get some of the horizontal type of scratcher you’re talking about. I’ll put that on my list.
BTW, I do read Karen’s blog. I think it’s hilarious!
How about getting rid of all of your furniture and rugs and give those cats nothing but a treadmill and a scratching post! So what if you have to sleep standing up! Your curcumin info is just so important. I will be eating broccoli pizza every day! pam
You may well have been born in the liddle’ole USofA,Margaret,
but with three cats you’re a true Florentine now.
When Annie and I visited the Pitti Palace some years ago,
we knew there were cats there before we had turned the
corner, and it wasn’t our ears that told us!
You can’t win.We’ve always had them Ancient Egyptian
drawings show a cat under Pharaoh’s throne.
Lovely little things, and good watchdogs too.
There is only one “cat scratch post” I have ever found that appeals to cats. Neither is it a post, nor is it even vertical. It is a horizontal tray made of corrugated cardboard slices all arranged so that the holes are up. You sprinkle catnip on it and your cats will go crazy scratching it and rolling on it. I have a friend who had tried everything to get her cats to use the posts with no success, but found that her cats loved scratching this tray more than anything else.