My cat vs. my carpet. How can I prevent this damage?

Hard wood. Go Brazilian!

Get something else if a scratching pole isn’t working. Something that the cat will shred instead. Ours like a cardboard scratching ramp. You can try cheap things first.

Many stair carpet are all individual pieces anyway, and are stapled in place. So you could rob a closet piece and shoot it in place if you have a pneumatic crown stapler. Is there tack strip underneath? As for the cat maybe you can close off that area so he cant get to it?

Thanks @woodcutter That makes more sense than stitching in a strip to the raw edges. I don’t think there’s a tack strip.
There is no blocking off the stairs. It’s a split level house and the steps are right in the middle of the main room and go up to frequently used areas (like the bathroom).

There’s also no changing his behavior @Zaku I’ve given up on that tactic. He doesn’t want to scratch or tear at anything else anywhere. He only likes the stairs.

You can buy plastic adhesive protectors that you could put over the areas of the carpet that the cat likes to scratch. One of mine like the carpet upstairs, right at the door way. Not sure why but that the part he liked to scratch. There are a number of types and brands. If you’re concerned about tripping hazard you might be able to put a layer of the kind of tape they make to create non-slip surfaces. Maybe it won’t be pretty but it should work. It also helps to keep the cats claws trimmed with cat claw clippers. There are nail caps that you can put over the cats claws but I have no experience with them, maybe someone here has.

Maybe you can find some carpet scraps to sacrifice, Like fasten them to the steps he attacks the most. After he shreds the cover piece just replace it with another before he gets all the way to the original carpet.

Excellent @lillycoyote I have the areas currently covered with duct tape (already resigned to not so pretty) so now he moves up a step but I hadn’t thought about putting the sticky side out. He does let me trim his nails and I spent many years working in a vet clinic so I can definitively say that the SoftPaws claw caps are not worth the trouble!

And that’s another really good notion @woodcutter. That could certainly be the solution here.

Well, whenever my cat does something like scratch the couch, I make a really obnoxious ”Tchh!” noise and that usually makes her scurry in a hurry outta there. Eventually she’ll make the connection, hopefully. If you away, you couldlok her in certain part of the house. This is not only safer, but will keep her from the stairs.

@Blueroses You might also just see, and this is only because my carpet trasher, Casper used love digging his claws into this material, one of those big foam pads, the ones they sell at Home Depot to protect your knees when you’re doing a job like laying tile that requires a lot of kneeling. I have no idea if your cat would like that but Casper loved them. I got him several when he destroyed a fairly pricey pair of Teva flip-flops. When he got through with one of the pads it looked like it was riddled with thousands of tiny bullet holes. My cats weren’t scratch post cats either. If you can find an alternative for them to scratch and claw it might help, you just have to figure out what this cat likes. Or maybe you can cover the carpet with carpet samples. He tears through the top layer and you replaces that before he gets to the real carpet.

I have four of these cat scratching slanted boards and four of just the reversable cardboard inserts. I scatter them all over. Milo spends a lot of time on them and thus fewer destructive minutes on screens and durrhie rugs.

I appreciate all the scratching alternatives suggestions, but I’ve tried several and this animal wants nothing to do with anything but the stairs. It might be a behavioral/communication method of saying “the new cat food sucks”, “this is what you get for keeping me out of your bedroom” or “change my litter NOW”
He’s 14 and I don’t think I’ll be changing his behavior at this point. I just don’t want to spend a lot of money on repairs without a way of protecting the investment.
I thought about nailing metal flashing down on the step edges but then someone I used to work with just suggested strips of bubble wrap (the cat hates that stuff) so I might try that first – but talk about an ugly solution.

Why not just recreate a set of four or five stairs out of wood. Sprinkle some catnip on the fake stairs and cover that with carpet scraps. When the carpet is trashed replace it. You could make the steps with some scraps of wood and saw. It isn’t like they need to be puuurfect.

Aha! @math_nerd Like a Blazing Saddles type decoy?
I like it.

@Blueroses My cats were adamantly, perhaps ideologically even, opposed to anything that was designed, devised or manufactured particularly for cats, in particular, anything that was designed to “trick“then into substituting acceptable behavior, like using a scratching pad, post or anything, for unacceptable behavior, like destroying the contents of my home. Bless their little hearts. I tried my best, but I loved them so much, I just kind of surendured. I guess I’m kind of a cat chump. You might try aluminum foil. Cats are supposed to hate it but I put it all over a place I was trying to keep them out of and it didn’t seem to phase them at. They wanted to do what they wanted where they wanted to do it and that was pretty much that. None of my foolish, silly human tricks were going to stop them.

LOL @lillycoyote I hear you loud and clear. The only thing my cat really fears is a mousetrap but if I put those on the stairs, it’s a sure bet it will snap on me or one of the dogs and then the damn cat will sit there laughing.

@Blueroses I really wish that I had kept a copy of the article, it was hilarious… one of the vets around here writes a weekly column for the local paper and this particular column was responses to a compilation of cat complaints, the only one I remember was a woman whose cat kept stealing her laundry. She would either put the dirty laundry in a hamper and the cat would steal her socks and underwear, etc. or she would put the clean clothes, right out of the dryer into a laundry basket and the cat would take the stuff then, and there were some other complaints and the vet’s reply was basically this list of about 10 total cat mind fucks, excuse my language but that’s basically what he was proposing, a list of 10 or so things you could possibly do to discourage your cat from such things and it was hilarious. Stuff that would never have even occurred to me.

That sounds great @lillycoyote (and I’ve used the term mindfuck myself at least once this evening). Do you remember the name of the vet? Maybe I could google the newspaper?

@Blueroses Actually, it my hometown newspaper. I would probably be easier for me to track it down. I know they have to have it their archives. It’s just been so long since I’ve tried to track down a newspaper archive. I’ll look into it but if you want to give it a shot it would have been in the News Journal; it’s a Gannet paper now, published in Wilmington, Delaware. Maybe about 8–10 year ago? I don’t remember the vets name but I would recognize it if I saw it but I just checked the yellow pages, yes the actual pages, in the phone book, the one made out of paper, and there were about 6 pages of vets and it’s late and I’m just not going to look through them all right now. And the News Journal keeps only it’s very recent stuff online. Anything older than a month or so you either can’t access or they want you to pay for, even for us Luddite locals who still actually have daily subscription to a paper newspaper. And… I was going to say good for you. This is the first time I’ve used the term mindfuck in months but maybe not so good. When you have to use the term mindfuck it usually means something, somewhere is pretty messed up. :-)

@lillycoyote Is it this fellow? Dr. Berg
I just googled “Delaware News Journal veterinary column” and he seemed to fit the time frame.

One of the vets I used to work for wrote a monthly column and I kept a file of them at the office so I thought if this is the guy it might be easier to email him directly than to search paper archives (what a pain that is). At least, he might remember the name and approx date of the article you remember.

Yellow pages? Made of paper? That doesn’t ring a bell. lol

@Blueroses Yes, that’s him. I thought thought it began with a B but I looked at the Bs and couldn’t find him but that might be because I can’t really read the print in the phone book, even with my glasses, because it’s so tiny.

@Blueroses And thanks, I just sent off an email to his office and I will let you know if I hear from them and if I find/get the column I will either post it or send it to you in a PM. Hopefully it will be as funny as I remember it being.

@lillycoyote Oh, thank you so much! I’m giggling in anticipation!

@Blueroses, am I getting that you don’t really want to try any negative conditioning. My thoughts were putting pepper on that area of carpet for a period. Then I thought of some type of carpet freshener, surely there would be one that your cat would hate the chemical smell of. My other option was already suggested by math nerd. There may be a number of factors on the steps that cat likes, like lying on something up off the floor, having a spot where he can be on his back and play at the same time; therefore if you can replicate that it might be a winner.

I found it comical that as I began reading this question I had to stop and throw our cat outside because he was scratching the good living room chair.