We have painfully learned that sometimes when you want to save money, you actually have to spend more money. The painful part is not the final quality purchase, but, rather, all the crap we bought up to the point where we finally admitted we had to stop buying crap.
Case in point: cat scratching posts. We have two cats full of personality…and claws. We wouldn’t dream about declawing them, but we do dream of containing the areas their sharp little claws may damage. When we first inherited the cats, we realized that one area we needed to manage was the top of the steps. They would run past you as you were making your way up the stairs, almost taking you down,and then cockily clawed the carpet in a sick victory dance before you could get to the top.
We knew that we would need to have some kind of scratching thing in that spot. So I proceeded to buy a post. It was not the cheapest, but definitely was on the cheap end at around $12. They tore through it within six months (My husband swears it didn’t even last that long.) Bits of carpet from the post littered the entire hallway. So I bought another one- another $12, maybe this one had rope or something that seemed much sturdier at the time. The ones at the pet store (and I’m talking big box store) all seemed about the same in material and construction, they just differed in size. It really didn’t seem that my money would go further just because I bought a bigger version of the same crappy scratching post. Sure enough, the little animals destroyed this one, too, within a few short months. We may have even, embarrassingly enough, have gone through this a couple more times. There had to be a better solution.
There was. A bit of research and reading of reviews convinced us that we needed to finally just pay up and buy a scratching post that was a lot more expensive. We came across the Smart Cat Ultimate Scratching Post. It was around $50 at the time we bought it (and for whatever reason is a bit cheaper now,which chaps me, but, still, read on) and worth every cent.
It is fantastic. I told my husband that I couldn’t write about it until enough time had gone by to warrant all the gushing we were doing in private. Finally, six full months elapsed and my husband officially declared it was time to boast. The thing looks as good today as the day we bought it. It is big and sturdy and very soundly built. No carpet in sight for them to tear off the thing in thousands of little pieces. I am sure I will update this post as time goes by to confirm that it is still going strong, but for any of you out there have similar cat post issues, this is THE post to get.
You may be thinking that at that price, I would need to have this thing for at least two years to make up the cost difference. While I fully expect this post to last at least that long, any length of time I have it for more than six months means less waste that I am putting in landfills. That is an important thing.
Life Improved 