DIY toy guide
Corrugated Cardboard Scratch Slab
The shop-bought scratcher costs £20. This one costs nothing.
Corrugated cardboard is the most reliably popular scratching surface there is, and every delivery box in your recycling pile is made of it. Cut into strips and glued edge-up, it makes a slab most cats prefer to the commercial version.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time
- 45 minutes
- Cost
- Free
🧺 You will need
- Six to ten large corrugated cardboard boxes, flattened
- A sharp craft knife and spare blades
- A metal ruler or straight edge
- A cutting mat or thick offcut of cardboard to protect the floor
- Non-toxic PVA wood glue
- A shallow tray, wooden box or picture frame to hold the slab (optional but recommended)
- Dried catnip or silvervine powder
🔧 How to make it
- Work out which way the flutes run in your cardboard by looking at a cut edge — you want to cut strips so that the open ends of the flutes will face upward in the finished slab.
- Cut the flattened boxes into strips of equal width, 8–10cm is ideal. Keep the cuts straight: a metal ruler and a fresh blade make far more difference than patience.
- Change your blade often. A blunt knife crushes the flutes and gives ragged edges, and it is also the main way people cut themselves on this project.
- Stand the strips on edge and stack them tightly side by side, flute-ends facing up, until you have a block the size you want. Around 40cm long is a good starting point.
- Run a thin line of PVA between every few strips as you build — you do not need to glue every layer, just enough to stop the block from splaying.
- Compress the finished block with a heavy weight or clamp and leave it to dry for several hours.
- Drop the dried block into a shallow wooden tray or old picture frame for a tidy finish, or wrap the sides in a strip of card and tape.
- Rub dried catnip or silvervine powder into the top surface and put it exactly where your cat is already scratching.
💡 Tips
Placement beats design every time. Cats scratch where they want to leave a mark — beside a doorway, next to their sleeping spot, along a route they patrol — so putting a beautiful scratcher in a quiet corner will fail while a scruffy one by the sofa succeeds. If your cat is destroying a specific chair arm, put the slab directly against that chair for the first fortnight, then move it a few centimetres a day. Flip the slab when one side gets shredded, and top it up with a fresh row of strips when it eventually sags.
📝 Notes
A slab this size takes an adult cat around three to four months to wear out. Keep the offcuts — small strips make excellent free refills.
