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Sunday, 26 August 2012

Refurbishing a cat scratching post

I have been meaning to do something about this for a while now. After a lifetime of use, this scratching post is way past it's best. It came with Bugsybaby about 16 years ago, and he has been constantly using it ever since. Lily and Freddie both used it, as does black cat Garcia who is a daily visitor. So you can see it has been just about mauled to death. So, what to do with it?

A new one can cost anything from £10 up to nearly £100, depending on how elaborate it is. I don't want to pay that so I'll have a go at refurbishing it. It's a simple design so it shouldn't be too dificult.

First I stripped off all the rope. This is sissal rope which can be purchased seperately if you wish to restore it back to it's new state. I don't want to spend any money at all on it. I could use the nylon rope I already have, left over from my roping and sheeting days, but I think I'll use an easier method. I was going to leave the base cover in tact and cover over it, but I decided to strip the green away from the board as well.

My first thought was to recover the base with carpet, but I found the hessian backed offcut I had was far too thick and stiff to fold around the edges. A thinner, cheaper, rubbery backed piece would have been better, but I don't have any. So I used a piece of upholstery fabric which I got from the Scrapstore. I started off by using staples to fasten it down, my friend kindly lent me an upholstery stapler gun. Then I ran out of staples so had to finish it off with small nails with a large head.

Next I cut a square from a piece of  lightweight carpet, slightly bigger than the top, folded down the edges and stapled it in place.

There was enough carpet to cover the whole pole. I decided to overlap the join and fasten with nails. This would have been too thick to secure with staples, if I had any left. It doesn't look very pretty, but it does the job. I can put the join against the wall so it isn't noticeable. I'm sure the cats couldn't care less what it looks like, and as this isn't a posh home it doesn't have to match the decor, ha ha.

So there we go, a refurbished cat scratcher. All I've got to do now is teach the kittykats how to use it, and hope they will stop pulling my stair carpet apart.


That was easy, might try making a new one now. Meeeow.

12 comments:

  1. Its lovely to see how you adapt stuff by fixing it up with what you already have to hand. I'm sure the kitties will love it.

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  2. That is a great refurb! My cat never liked using those; he preferred to scratch the furniture. Being constantly told off was part of the fun, I think!

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  3. Brilliant idea Ilona, I was wondering how much the rope was to do ours, but usually I find another one at the car boot.I have some cord carpet so will do this to ours.
    As for clawing the carpet, I pretty much give up on that. We have scratching posts all over the house but still they prefer the carpets and furniture. lol
    If you love your cats its something we have to put up with I think.
    Briony
    xx

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  4. Really super ! Looks like new !

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  5. Cats really like pulling at carpet don't they? They'll love it I'm sure.

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  6. that's a pretty simple idea, should tell dd about it.

    Gill in Canada

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  7. Nice job! That reminds me that I need to do the same for Salem. Years ago we found that he tends to scratch the wall corner in the hallway where the door to the toilet is situated. As I couldn`t stop him from doing it the easiest job was to clad the corner with some wood pannel and fix an offcut of carpet onto that. This carpet has been shredded now, so I must replace it.

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  8. Chrs once made a huge cat house/play area from carpet scraps...the cats we had at the time loved it.It didn't match our 'decor' either!
    Jane x

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  9. It looks great! we have scratch posts all around the house but one of the cats has just discovered the wooden shoe cabinet is nice to scratch!

    Josie

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  10. Wow it looks great, and seems a fairly simple fix. Just a matter of taking the time and using what you have. Cheers Judy

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  11. Great job Ilona! The kitties will love you even more.

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  12. My 2 cats have a scratching post, but one of them loves to scratch woodwork, and I used to have one who scratched my furniture. I bought a piece of material and used to staple it to the couch, but he pulled the staples out all the time as he scratched. Nails are much better. Good job!

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