Refurbished scratch post with sisal from Ace Hardware

The sisal rope on the cats' scratch post had worn out towards the top, so it was time to replace ... or refurbish the post.

I was very tempted to get a much taller scratch post, as our cats are now grown up. But the local pet shops didn't seem to stock 1m scratch post poles (or close to that). The tall 1m+ scratch post I found was actually a few short scratch poles stacked on top of each other and stabilised with wide plywood bases at each level. That's not long enough for my grown-up cats to perform vertical full-body stretch and scratch. Anyway, I have no intention of turning our living room into an expensive cat gym. An American fragrant cedar cat tree would have made a fine replacement but at USD390, I'm sure there are cheaper local versions... if I can find the wood and carpenter.

For now, I decided on a temporary solution - to get more sisal to replace the worn out sisal on the scratch post. Seriously, it wasn't easy finding more sisal in KL. I had enquired at several local hardware stores but they didn't seem to know what sisal is! After weeks of hunting, I finally found 1/4" (0.63cm) diameter sisal rope at Ace Hardware, Mid Valley Megamall selling for 50 sen per foot. It's in the ropes and wires section, stored in rows and rows of large reels. It's not clearly marked, so I searched for labels or handwritten notes on the side of the reels to make sure that I didn't mistaken manila rope for sisal. I've read that manila rope tends to be heavily oiled and stinks.

I was surprised to discover that, even without glue, the new sisal grips quite well onto the scratch post's old sisal. So I started wrapping the scratch post from the top while making sure that the top end of the new sisal is secured by tightly winding the rest of the sisal rope over it. To secure the bottom end of the rope, I tied several knots towards the last few rows of the windings. Of course, skipping the glue meant that my scratch post didn't look neat for long but it will do for a few weeks.

All in all 10 metres of 1/4" sisal rope covers about 2/3 of the 50cm tall by 8cm diameter scratch post.