Most the time we have solved the problem of cats clawing furniture with a scratch pad - the type that looks like it is made of a kind of corrugated cardboard stuck together like the one in the picture. We found that the ones with catnip are the most effective. There are bigger ones than the one shown in the picture.
We have always neutered our cats - they all seemed to have been happy enough without the hassles (for both the cats and us) associated with them coming into season.
