Cat scratching wooden hull on a houseboat

Living on a houseboat with a Burmese who's decided the hull interior is a scratch pad — that's a specific problem, and floor space is clearly at a premium here. Scratching is completely normal cat behaviour: your Burmese is maintaining her claws and leaving scent marks, not staging a renovation. The fix isn't to stop her scratching but to give her something better to scratch instead. To point you toward the right thing — is she going at the hull vertically, reaching up and pulling down? And do you know roughly what draws her to the wood specifically — the texture, the resistance, or just that it's there and she passes it regularly?

That tells me a lot. She wants vertical scratching, rough texture, and proximity to you — she's not scratching randomly, she's scratching in your space on purpose. That's classic Burmese social marking. The rough wood texture means sisal rope will satisfy her far better than carpet. And given the houseboat floor space issue, a wall-mounted scratcher is the obvious move here — it goes on the wall, takes up zero floor space, and you can position it right next to where she currently scratches the hull.

I'd go with the Trixie Sisal Wall Scratcher. It's a flat sisal panel that mounts directly onto a wall or vertical surface, roughly 40cm tall — substantial enough for a Burmese to get a proper full-stretch scratch. It's wrapped in natural sisal rope which gives that rough, draggy texture she clearly likes. You fix it at the height she naturally reaches when she stands up against the hull, position it over one of her two favourite spots, and you're giving her the same experience — vertical, rough, in your presence — without the hull taking the damage. It's around £12–15 on Amazon UK, which is about as low-stakes a fix as you'll find.

Yes, honestly get two. They're cheap enough that it's worth covering both spots rather than hoping she transfers from one to the other — cats are territorial about their scratch locations, and she's claimed both of those spots for a reason. Mount one at each site, and you've addressed her actual behaviour rather than trying to redirect it across the boat. Within a week or two she should be using them instead of the hull. If she's slow to take to them, rub a little dried valerian or silver vine on the sisal — most Burmese respond strongly to those, even more so than catnip.

Good plan. Mount them at the exact height she reaches now — measure against the hull marks if you can — and she should transition quickly. Burmese are bright cats and they tend to get it fast once the alternative is right in front of them. The hull should be left alone within a couple of weeks.