Turkey can be a challenging place to be a cat owner. Veterinarians are sometimes sketchy, cat food is expensive and finding a bag of decent cat litter can take me an entire afternoon sometimes.
Cat toys and accessories are almost non-existent and when you do find them, they're often pricey and were obviously designed by people who have no idea what cats like.
Take scratching posts, for example.
Scratching posts for cats here are generally about 12 inches tall -- not nearly high enough for a cat to get a good stretch -- and made of cheap rope, which tends to fall apart after a few months of rigorous cat scratching.
No matter how hard I looked or how many vets I visited, I couldn't find a single decent cat scratching post in Izmir. As a result, I almost went insane trying to have both kilims (Turkish carpets) and cats in my home.
And then, just when I thought I'd have to roll up my carpets for good, I found a solution.
And it only cost me $441.71.
Enter the Purrfect Post and its bigger, stronger cousin, the Mondo.
The two posts on the left, the Mondo and the Purrfect Post, were delivered a few weeks ago all the way from California. The third post is one we brought back from Istanbul recently. (Yes, you read that right: we actually had to go all the way to Istanbul for a rinky-dinky little cat post.)
The Mondo is a whopping 99 cm (39 inches) tall with not one, not two but THREE places for the cats to scratch: the bottom platform, the post itself and the top perch.
The Mondo, as you can see, is very loved by Frankie.
Of course, he's not the only one:
In the few weeks we've had these two posts in our house, the scratching of our carpets, rugs and sofas has gone down to nearly zero. For two weeks, I rolled up all the kilims and carpets and trained the cats to ONLY scratch their posts. With some complimentary catnip that came with the posts and lots of positive reinforcement when they scratched the post and not, say, my sofa, they very quickly learned what was up.
Now, these posts are not cheap. The two posts themselves cost $195, but the shipping -- oh, the shipping! -- almost made me faint. We paid $246 to have $195 worth of stuff shipped to us.
But was it worth it? Oh hells yeah. If you have cats and carpets, or if you live in a furnished apartment and don't want your cats destroying your landlord's furniture, these are awesome alternatives to your Ikea sofa armchair. And now my beloved Hakkari kilim is safe.
My next task: to stop Frankie "helping" me cook....
*Just so we're clear: The Purrfect Post company did not pay me to write this post and I have only done so because I really, really like these posts and wanted to tell you about them in case you too are trying to have a life with cats and kilims.
