Recently I found a cat toy at a thrift store. I am not sure who makes it. The closest I could find was a toy called SmartCat 3836 Tick Tock Teaser perhaps this is a predecessor. They really loved it for the first ten minutes but now they barely notice it.
Last weekend we were at Petco buying cat food when Rose decided the cats needed another scratching post to help encourage Chris to scratch on things other than her chair. We have plenty of approved scratching places in the house that Chris ignores but I figured it was worth a try.
We decided to get the SmartCat Ultimate Scratching Post because it was tall and heavy and seemed like it might be different enough to encourage Chris to use it. It had a hefty price tag of $80 but we decided to spend the money.
I put it together and Puck scratched on it right away but not Chris. I decided to sprinkle a little catnip on it to see if that would help but most of it fell to the ground where Chris and puck fought over it while ignoring the scratching post.
It has now been in our house for six days and Puck’s orientation scratch was the first and last time I saw a cat use the so-called ultimate scratching post. To add insult to injury, I just found the same thing on Amazon for $45.
Update (September 1, 2014): This scratching post has now been in our house for over a year. After publishing this post I moved it to a higher traffic area of the house and can report that it does get more use where it is at. It does not get a lot of use but the cats use it enough to justify keeping it.
Bad Cat Chris 