However if you’ve decided that as you don’t yet have a cat that you’re going to get a pet moggy there’s a few things you need to think about. One of them is how to keep him happy and entertained. And a great way to make sure you have a happy feline is to provide him or her with a cat tree and scratching post.

Cats just love to climb, and outdoors cats spend lots of time climbing, usually on trees. But if your cat lives indoors he won’t have a tree to climb on. Well he won’t unless you buy him a cat tree, the perfect cat play equipment.

If you’ve never seen a cat tree you’ll be surprised. They are strange looking things but cats love cat trees . They have many strange nooks and crannies for your cat to investigate, and your cat will spend hours climbing it and playing on it.

You can buy commercial cat trees or you can make one of your own. If you’re handy with a hammer and nails it’s perfectly possible to build a cat tree yourself. And if you enjoy building things you can have some fun trying to make his tree as innovative as possible.

One of the other things you need to think about if you’ve decided to get a pet cat is to give him or her something to scratch. Cats love to scratch and need to do so to keep their claws sharp. You may not want him to have sharp claws but he will do so anyway, and if you don’t provide him something to scratch then he’ll scratch the legs of your favourite piece of furniture instead. And probably lots of other pieces of furniture as well.

Cat scratching posts are designed to provide the cat with somewhere to scratch that can happily be damaged from the scratching without upsetting the owner of the cat. There are both horizontal and vertical cat scratching posts, however both provide the same function, to give the cat somewhere to scratch to save the legs of your furniture.

Both a tree and the scratching post are designed to keep your cat happy by allowing him to follow his instincts without any stress on you.

But not every cat takes to his tree immediately. Sometimes the owner has to provide some gentle encouragement by putting some catnip on the tree, or perhaps by hanging some special toys from the branches to encourage the household pet begin using it.

It’s without doubt that they make wonderful pets, but you have to take some simple steps to ensure that you provide him with lots of things to do and places where he can follow his instincts without disapproval. Providing your cat with a scratching post and a tree goes a long way towards doing this.

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