Do you remember my attempt at improving Puddy’s scratching post a couple weeks ago, with the fluro green rope? Well today Phill and I decided to re-do it… again. We thought it could look better and, since Puddy wasn’t very keen on using it, we wanted to get rid of the rope. We stripped it down which left us with the bare cardboard roll.

Now, what to wrap around it?

Puddy has a piece of carpet you’ve probably seen in some of the photos on here. We got it a long time ago to put under our office chairs, so they wouldn’t dent the carpet, but we had some left over and since Puddy seemed to love scratching at it, we put it downstairs for her to use. We figured this would be a good material to wrap around the post, since she already loves it, it’s free and there would be enough left over to leave on the ground for her to scratch at.

We measured and cut the carpet to size, then realised the post could unscrew out of the base, which would make wrapping it much easier. We decided the best way to do this was to place the carpet on the table (fuzzy side down) and lie the post across it. We then squeezed a generous amount of glue down the post, then pressed the carpet against it to stick. We let that dry for five minutes, then did the same at the other end, wrapping the carpet firmly against the post.

We attached the post to the base again and, using rope left over from the original version, we tied around the post to help hold it in place while the glue set. The effect was quite cute, almost like it was a creepy crawley, and I nicknamed the post the “Spidey Scratcher” (although Centipede Scratcher might be more suitable).

As I type this, it’s still drying on the dining room table and Puddy hasn’t been allowed near it, so I don’t know her reaction yet. I hope she’ll like it – it certainly looks more attractive than Scratching Post 2.0! We were debating whether or not to remove all of the rope after it’s dried – Puddy loves that rope and perhaps it would add a fun element if we left some (or all?) on for her to chew and grab at? What do you think?  Leave the rope on or take it off?

Oh, and is Scratching Post 3.0 the best version yet?