I don't agree with declawing cats cause no cat should be house ridden...........'but", at the same time those little fuckers like to sharpen those things on your nice furniture, in which case I am all for giving a cat a belt beating or a face full of a water bottle spray. Growing up we always had outdoor cats yet they still loved to fucking put their backs into tearing up the couch or stereo speaker covers. They need a periodic beating to reinforce the "NO". I'm not advocating a thrashing that leaves em maimed, but a good spanking with a belt is not out of the question. Those claws can rip the fuck out of shit. But that's also what allows them to scamper up trees right quick if a dog comes for em. So leave em with the claws, but put the fear of god into em if they even "think" about using those bad boys in the house..............tha'ts my take.
Hun, I'm sure your intentions are good but, take this as I'm saying it,
hush. Hitting cats is
NOT an effective deterrent, ever. A cat is not capable of equating stopping what it was doing with pain from you, it IS capable of equating YOU with pain. Hitting dogs works (to a degree) because dogs are pack animals and hardwired to grasp negative reinforcement. However, when you hit a cat for doing something you don't like, the cat learns to be afraid of
you and you end up with a fearful, neurotic cat who might think it's a good idea to shit or piss on your bed (fear and/or abuse will cause cats to toilet inappropriately).
Water pistols are more effective, as are unpleasant noises (the sound of coins in a can or the sound of an air can hissing work really well) or even unpleasant tactile feelings, like double sided tape or aluminum foil (one of my cats loves to lie on top of my computer monitor. I don't want her up there so I put double sided sticky tape on top of the monitor. She stepped on it once, got totally creeped out, and hasn't been back since).
HOWEVER, none of that shit works for scratching (well, the unpleasant tactiles do, but it's a hassle) because you have to understand what's going on when a cat scratches something, it is not out of malice or even to "sharpen their claws." They are are tearing off the ragged edges of the sheaths of their talons. Cats continually shed their claws to expose new sharp ones beneath. Additionally, since their claws are actually the ends of their toes, they are stretching the ligaments and tendons of their feet and legs. Finally, cats have scent glands on their feet, they are depositing scent marks on what they are scratching.
Cats need to "sharpen their claws" physiologically and psychologically (even declawed cats go through the motions of sharpening their claws). And they will return to a spot they have used before precisely because they have scent marked it, whether you beat their asses or not. However, they do
not need to sharpen their claws on your furniture. You merely need to provide the animal with sufficient scratching posts (or even old pieces of wood with the bark still on them or even heavy corrugated cardboard, rubbed with catnip, trying different things is the best bet, then you remove the stuff that isn't used).
I have Top Cat scratching posts. I have six cats, they ALL use the hell out of them, completely stripped the sisal off the last two I had, stripped them right down to the wood. I just bought new ones this year.