[want4rain]

they get a real kick out of scratching door jambs, flooring, cabinets, the wood pieces between the panes of glass on the back door.... they arent inexpensive things to fix or replace. i mean, the economy is is bad enough that if we had to sell the house because we couldnt afford it we couldnt right now its such a mess. we have to completely replace the railing to the stairs, more than 3/4 of the supports have extensive damage from the cats scratching. since they did so much damage... i put double sided tape onto it thinking they would learn to eventually leave it alone... they have managed to scratch around it and the tape...

i have no less than 5 of those cardboard scratchers... a slanted carpet scratcher, a carpeted one that hangs onthe wall (covering their first scratching spree), two wooden ones with left over molding from someone elses house all around it.... thinking it might look good since they scratch so much of the wood in the house and one of those rope ones... and a really tall carpeted scratcher. they all get used but not asmuch as our walls... we tried caps on Shadow.... he chewed them off. i am HOME so i see most of when they do this unless its at night and im sleeping... and frankly i think i stress the snot out of them by squirting them with water when they scratch.

we still havent figured out what we are going to do when we start gettign ready to sell the house.

when i started here iw as quite upset about declawing. i cant remember who it was that said a home is more important than your cats claws. in other words if it came between rehoming my cats or declawing them... i would declaw in a heart beat. i highly doubt it will ever come to that but thats how i feel about it. likely we will find a temp home for the few months we work towards restoring the house and when we move... live in a concrete house.

-ashley