Scheme of study protocol.
ADVERSE EFFECTS, EVENT
A questionnaire with four subsections was designed:the first section inquired about owner and cat’s demographic information;the second section was completed by the respondents at the beginning of the study and inquired about the cat’s daily routines, social and physical environments, behaviour, temperament, and emotional states. This included questions about type of food, body condition, owners’ opinion on the cat’s temperament and personality, time spent playing, reaction to visits/new people, frequently seen body postures, other behavioural problems, scratching post information etc;the third section included questions to assess the Frequency and the Intensity of the scratching problem and the effectiveness of the product on a weekly basis (see supplementary files). In this section owners were also inquired about the cat’s body postures. Owners were also asked to report any changes and adverse effects seen on the week before. This was filled by the participants on day 0, 7, 14, and 28 of the study.the last section, which included four questions related to the respondents’ opinions about the product and the overall behavioural outcome, was delivered the 28To be selected, the caregiver needed to be over 18 years old and to have signed their consent. Undesired scratching was defined as scratching on vertical surfaces indoors other than the scratching post, for example the sofa, carpet, curtains, or furniture. Only single cat households with undesirable scratching behavioural reported by the caregiver for at least one month, with a minimal frequency on the scale of two per week (indoor scratching), were included.To evaluate undesirable scratching Frequency, the caregivers were asked to consider any event directly observed or deduced from new damage observed during the previous week, and to report it on a semi-quantitative scale with 7 degrees (0 = Never, 1 = Once a week, 2 = Twice a week, 3 = Every 2 days, 4 = Almost every day, 5 = Every day, once or twice a day, 6 = Every day, more than twice a day) [A Global Index Score of scratching was calculated by multiplying the Intensity by the Frequency, resulting in a score ranging from 0 to 60.A “Disturbing” value was recorded every week by asking the owners (on a visual analogue scale from 0–10) to what extent did they consider this scratching problem was disturbing for them and their household over the last 7 days. At D28, owners were asked to provide their overall assessment of the scratching problem over the 28 days (worse (higher Frequency or Intensity) / worse (new scratching place) / Didn’t change at all / Changed a little (lower Intensity only) / Changed a little (lower Frequency only) / Changed a lot (both Frequency and Intensity) / Changed completely (stopped scratching)).The animal study was reviewed and approved by Ceva Santé Animale Committee (ref CFAEC-2022-08). Written informed consent was obtained from the owners for the participation of their animals in the study.