How to Deal with Cat Damage to Trees

(Classical Background Music Playing) Blair Glenn: Hi, this is Blair Glenn. I am ISA Certified Arborist. And the subject that I would like to talk about today is Cat Damage to Tree Trunks. As everyone who owns a cat understands, these animals like to sharpen their claws on post, trees, or whatever. Many types of trees have very thin bark that are highly susceptible to damage from these claws. What you are looking at here is a young maple tree. It is about five inches in diameter. And a cat has been clawing on the trunk of this so much that it caused an opening that dried out and as you can see, the tree is trying to close over the wound. But the only damage that ever occurred to this tree was due to cats, scratching the trunk. It was really interesting because the client called me out and pointed this out to me and asked me “What is wrong with my tree? It is a young tree!” I asked him, did you damage it anyway? And they said no. I looked at it closely and it became very apparent that the cat’s reach up as high as you can see here. And through excessive clawing, cause this much damage. Now when a young tree is damaged to this degree, it will certainly survive but it becomes a long term battle between excessive decay in the core of the tree and the active cambium tissue trying to close over and carry on. But the damage that occurs is permanent. It does not repair it self, it just grows around of the damaged area. Here is yet another example of a thin barked tree. This is a Crape Myrtle. I do not know why they are attracted to these trees maybe because of the smoothness of the bark, it is easy for them to scratch on but, Crape Myrtles for some reason are a variety of tree that I frequently see cat damage to. So over the course of the life of this tree, it is damaging and healing and damaging. Trying to repair itself but, it is a constant and the area of impact on this tree that is compromised by constant cat scratching it is quite severe. Even up to the main crutches on this low tree, you can see areas where the cats where sharpen their claws and it is very extensive. So I guess finally, you have to ask yourself “What can you do about it?” One obvious choice is to wrap the trunks of the tree in something that the cats do not like such as chicken wire or some kind of fancy material but that is not very attractive. Another thought process would be to spray this area which is a way of offending the cats. There are certain types of sprays that contain either Chyanne Pepper or some sorts of chemicals that are offensive to the cats. When they get it on their paws and they lick their paws later and they relate that odor and that bad taste to that tree and they stopped doing it. I am open for ideas if anybody has any good suggestions on how to stop cats from doing this because it is a very serious problem Once again, this is Blair Glenn. I am ISA Certified Arborist. Have a good day.