Scratch Canvas Guides
How to Help Your Cat Get Started with Scratch Canvas
Every cat scratches a little differently. Start with what your cat already likes, then give them time to make Scratch Canvas their own.
By Tanner and Tara
A new scratcher does not always get an immediate scratch.
Sometimes it does. Sometimes the first day is a slow walk past, a long sniff, and then what looks a lot like indifference. That is normal, and it is not a verdict.
The instinct at that point is to talk the cat into the scratcher. The better move is the opposite one: leave the cat alone and adjust the scratcher until it fits the cat you already have.
Watch first. Adjust second. Encourage rather than force.
Here is how to do each of those in the first week or two, and what to try when the first arrangement does not take.
Start with your cat, not the canvas
Before deciding where the easel looks best, spend a couple of days noticing what your cat is already doing. You are not training anything yet. You are collecting the brief.
- What do they already scratch? A rug, a couch corner, a chair leg, the side of a cardboard box.
- Do they reach up, or work along the floor? Cats that go after chair legs and couch corners may prefer an upright surface; cats that work at rugs and carpets may prefer a horizontal one.
- Where do they sleep? Cats often scratch and stretch right after waking, so a resting spot is a strong candidate for a scratching surface.
- Which rooms do they actually use? Scratching tends to happen on prominent objects in busy places, near doorways and along the route through the house.
None of this is a test your cat can fail. Scratching is normal, instinctive behavior with several jobs at once, and preference varies from cat to cat — it can even change as a cat gets older.
Your cat has already chosen surfaces, angles and locations. Start from those.
Try the position they already prefer
Scratch Canvas does not have one correct orientation. The panel lifts off the easel, and the easel’s support arm drops into a notch on the base, so the same panel can be presented three fairly different ways. Which to try first is a question about your cat, not about the product.
Flat
Lift the panel off the easel and set it down on the floor. Reasonable to try first for a cat who works along rugs and carpets.
A low easel angle
Panel on the easel, support arm set so the panel sits close to the floor. A middle ground between flat and upright, and worth a turn if you are not sure which way your cat leans.
A steeper angle
Worth testing when your cat already targets something upright, like the side of a chair or the corner of a couch. The idea is simply to match the orientation your cat has been choosing, in a place where they were choosing it.
None of these is the best angle. They are three things to try, and your cat settles it.
One honest limit: a cat who wants to stretch out to full height with their paws above their head may still want a tall vertical post as well, and Scratch Canvas is not one — a panel measures 16 in W × 12 in H. Some cats want both kinds of surface, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Whichever position you start with, put it on a sturdy, level surface and check that it stays put when it is leaned on. A scratching surface that shifts underfoot tends not to get used twice.
If you have not taken the panel off the easel yet, the setup videos show the whole thing, including the swap.
Put it where something is already happening
The temptation is to put a new scratcher where it looks best rather than where the cat already is.
Places worth starting:
- Directly beside the furniture they have been scratching
- Next to a favorite sleeping or napping spot
- In a room the household actually spends time in
- Along the path they already take through the house
The guest room is not the place to start. The point is to make the better option the easy one at the exact moment your cat wants to scratch.
The first location does not have to be permanent. Once your cat is using it consistently, you can move it gradually toward wherever you would rather have it. Gradually is the operative word: the Ohio State Indoor Pet Initiative suggests no more than about three inches a day. If use drops off, move it back and go slower.
And more than one is allowed. Several surfaces in different rooms, in different orientations, is a normal setup rather than an excessive one, particularly in a house with more than one cat.
Invite them to try it
Placement gets the surface into the right part of the room. These four are about making it worth investigating once it is there.
1. Let them investigate on their own terms
Expect sniffing, sitting beside it, rubbing a cheek along the frame, walking across it, lying down on it, and ignoring it completely — sometimes all in the first hour.
None of that is failure, including the ignoring. A cat who sniffs it, sits beside it, or falls asleep on it has still chosen to be near it.
There is one thing worth avoiding. Do not carry your cat over and rub their paws against the panel. It looks harmless and it can backfire: guidance from Humane World for Animals warns it can create a stress response in some cats and lead them to avoid the scratching surface afterwards. It is the one introduction that can actively set you back.
2. Bring the play to it
Play near the panel rather than at it. A wand toy or a laser moving around and across the surface lets your cat land on it in the middle of a chase, which is a much better introduction than any amount of pointing.
The panel becomes part of the game instead of the point of it. That is the whole trick.
3. Try a little catnip, if your cat responds to it
Rubbing a little catnip onto a new scratching surface for the first few days is a common way to invite a cat to investigate it, and it is entirely optional.
Not every cat responds to catnip. If yours is not interested, skip it — play, a treat, or another reward your cat already values may be the better invitation.
4. Reward the moment it happens
When your cat uses the panel, reward them right away. Immediately matters more than generously: the FelineVMA’s Cat Friendly Homes guidance puts the useful window at about three seconds, so the reward lands on the behavior rather than on whatever happened next.
What counts as a reward is personal. A treat, a minute of interactive play, a bit of petting, or simply your attention are all on the list, and different cats rank them differently. Use the one your cat actually likes.
The other half of that is easier to say: no spray bottle, no raised voice, nothing designed to startle. Veterinary guidance is blunt about this — punishment increases undesirable scratching rather than reducing it, and cats do not connect it to the thing you meant. Our first guide goes into why in more detail.
Meet them where they are
Flat. Low. Steeper. Beside the couch. Next to the bed. In the other room, on the day they decide the first room is boring.
Those are the variables Scratch Canvas gives you: the angle, the place, and whether the panel starts on the easel or flat.
None of them guarantees a scratch. What they do is let you respond to what your cat is already showing you — by what they choose, and by what they walk past — instead of treating the first setup as the permanent one.
A setup you have changed twice is not a failed setup. It is one that is being fitted.
What worked with our cats
Everything above is drawn from published feline-behavior guidance. This part is not. It is just what we have watched our own two cats do, offered as examples rather than as instructions.
One thing surprised us: when we set the panel completely flat, our cats will often choose to lie right on it. Sometimes they stay there for quite a while, with no easel involved at all.
The lowest easel angle gets much the same treatment. Same panel, back on the easel, barely tilted.
It also does not live in one place. The panel comes off and goes where they already are, and goes back on the easel later. We stopped expecting the cats to come to a fixed location some time ago, and things have been easier since.
The steeper settings are the ones we reach for when a cat has been working on something upright. That is us matching the orientation to the target the way the guidance above suggests, not a result we have measured.
Two cats is not a study. Your cat may want none of this, or may want the one arrangement ours never picked.
Give it time
The first week is information, not a verdict.
Some cats claim a new surface the first afternoon. Some sleep on it for a month before they ever scratch it. Some decide this is not the orientation they want — and that is worth knowing too, because it tells you what they would rather have.
If nothing is happening after a week or two, change one thing and wait again. The angle. Then the room. Then how you are inviting them. Changing one variable at a time is what makes the answer legible.
And if your cat’s scratching changes suddenly, or arrives with other unusual behavior, that is a conversation for your veterinarian rather than a setup problem.
Watch what they choose. Then move the canvas, not the cat.