Put a bare cardboard disc on the floor and a cat may well walk past it for a week. Add something that moves and the disc becomes worth investigating. The scratching surface is identical either way, so what you are paying for is the introduction, and for a cat that ignores scratchers that is the part that matters.

The balls sit in a channel around the outside, which means they stay with the scratcher instead of disappearing under the sofa inside a day. A cat batting at the rim is standing on the corrugate while it does it. That is the whole design, and it is a sound one.

Catnip comes with it rather than being worked into the board. Rub it across the surface for the first few sessions and most cats will investigate properly. Bear in mind that the catnip response is inherited and a sizeable minority of cats lack it, so no reaction is not a fault in the product.

33.5cm across and 5.7cm thick. It suits cats up to medium build. A large cat cannot get a full forward stretch on a disc this size, and the live description claiming it suits cats of all sizes is not doing anyone any favours. Cats that want to stretch right out are better off on a rectangle. You will find them in the cat scratchers range.

Some do and some do not, and the ones that do tend to treat it as two separate toys rather than one. Batting the ball and scratching the board are different activities to a cat, and a track keeps the first one from wandering off.

Does catnip make a cat use a scratcher? More often than anything else will, which is why it comes in the box. The effect lasts around ten minutes and then the cat is immune to it for an hour or so. Kittens under a few months old rarely react at all.

How big should a round cat scratcher be? Enough width that your cat can turn on it without a paw going over the edge. Around 33cm covers most cats of average size. Anything bigger is better served by a rectangular lounger than by a wider disc.

Will a lightweight cat scratcher slide on wooden floors? Yes, and at 0.3kg this is the lightest scratcher we stock. On laminate or bare boards it shifts as soon as a cat digs in and hauls backwards. Stand it on a rug or wedge it against something solid.

How heavy should a cat scratcher be? Under roughly half a kilo and it will travel on a smooth surface unless something holds it. That is the usual reason a cheap pad ends up ignored: a surface that skids away mid-scratch teaches a cat not to bother with it.

Corrugated board scratchers work by shedding strips. When a disc stops producing debris the flutes have collapsed and it has stopped doing its job, whatever it still looks like.