Showing love to a pet cat makes it more likely to scratch the sofa.
Cats are more likely to scratch the sofa if shown affection
A new study conducted by researchers at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil have found that felines are more likely to damage the furniture if they have a close emotional bond with their owner.
The team surveyed 500 cat owners in Brazil in an attempt to understand whether the level of emotional closeness between owners impacts the behaviour of the animal.
The experts wrote: "Evidence supports that cats' behaviour influences the level of emotional closeness between the animals and the owners.
"Surprisingly, scratching furniture and destroying objects was directly associated with a higher emotional closeness in our population.
"Owners who did not report this behaviour had a lower level of emotional closeness than those who did."
However, the reason for the link remains unclear for the time being.
The researchers said: "This behaviour could have been interpreted as expected and tolerable by most owners, since scratching appears to be corrected relatively less than other cats' problem behaviours."