NEVER de-claw a cat or kitten. It is cruel, and there is a very simple solution. Nail clippers! About once every 2 weeks, plus 1 minute of your time … clip the sharp tips off, problem solved.

Declawing may not be necessary if the kitten is able to be taught against scratching at a young age. This means not purchasing a scratching post, but I think a scratching mat of cardboard is okay. My last cat never ever scratched the furniture, and my new kitten hasn’t either.

My kitten doesn’t play around with anything of mine that it shouldn’t, cause he just doesn’t find it fun. Likewise, my kitten loves his store-bought roller-ball toy and has not once laid on the clean pile of sheets I’ve had on the floor for the last few days. Clean laundry does nothing for him.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that all kittens are different and this list isn’t very representative of the kitten experience. Its like having a child – you may end up with one that is overly hyper and tears up your household, but its up to you to teach them to act differently with non-violent discipline tactics.

But tip for food: just leave out dry food for him, and they’ll eat when they’re hungry – no getting up early.

Gotta love them though=D

There are humane options such as removable claw “thimbles”, scratch trees, closing doors to rooms with valuable items and training the cat what is and what isn’t appropriate to scratch. If you have no patience to do things the humane way, and are not willing to accept the risk of things getting destroyed by scratching, do the cat a favour and let someone else adopt it.