Thanks, I hadn't even considered the territory marking issue. I may have to start discouraging Pixie from "clawing" certain things.
In fact, I actually had to start discouraging Pixie yesterday, since I accidentally "trained" her to claw at one of my posters. You see, Pixie is one of those cats that has been free fed dry food all her life and we're trying to slowly transition her to wet food. Right now we've recently introduced the concept of "meal times". I feed her twice a day with only 30 minutes to eat her fill, once when I get up and again shortly after getting home from work. This has left her in a chronic state of "Oh my God, I'm going to starve to death right now if I don't get food immediately!!"
I have this big (1x1.5m) Joy Division poster right above the headboard of our bed that Pixie has occasionally liked to paw at, and I always just let her since she can't do any real harm to it. So one morning last week Pixie decides she needs to mark the poster while I'm sleeping. The loud "POP POP POP" that this generated woke me up, and since it was only a few minutes before the alarm would have gone off I went ahead and got up and fed her like I normally do. It happened again the next morning, and I didn't think much of it since it was only a few minutes before I would have been getting up anyway. However, the next morning she started even earlier. And when I didn't get up to feed her right away, she'd do it again only for longer and then repeat it every 5 minutes or so. Eventually, I got up and fed her and went back to sleep.
That continued for another morning. I'm not exactly a morning person, so I couldn't very well let this contiue.
Not wanting to punish her for being clever, and not wanting to keep losing sleep, last night I decided to give the poster itself a defense mechanism. I took out the masking tape and taped down several rows, sticky side out across the poster, with a vertical strip anchored above the poster for added durability.
This morning, I vaguely recall some rustling above my head as I slept, but it wasn't until I awoke that I discovered that one of the long pieces of tape had been ripped in half and the rest of the tape was filled with bite marks.
Apparently, Pixie didn't care much for my little addition.
Fortunately, it more or less worked as intended, and with some minor repairs it will be ready to go again tonight. Pixie also appears to have miraculously survived the extra few minutes without dying.
Pixie should just consider herself lucky that I love this kind of "creative destruction", and find it incredibly adorable. Which also explains why I'm getting a Bengal.