Does it have to be the cardboard variety, and is it supposed to serve as your cats' primary scratching medium? I've had a Purrfect Post for about a year and a half, and it still looks almost new. My cats use it constantly and never touch the furniture. It's designed to be tall enough and sturdy enough that the cats can get a good stretch while scratching without having the thing wobbling all over the place. I'll never go back to the smaller posts they have all over the place.

As for the cardboard ones...I don't know how long you expect them to last, so don't know if you're getting particularly flimsy ones or what, but they are disposable and have never been particularly long-lived in any of my households. I also hate the mess they make (cardboard bits everywhere), so often end up tossing them sooner, rather than later.

The perfect post is good, basically you want ones as rough and bark-like as possible.

cats hate fluffy scratching posts.

Thanks for your advices. I just ordered a cat tree from ebay. It comes with scratching post. Unfortunately, my cats are used to and love scratching pad. They are using it when they get frustrated. Therefore, I determined not giving up on a cardboard pad or anything that flat so they can scratch horizontally. Fat Cat Big Mama's brand name used to have quality durable cardboard. Now they have a low quality one available that leave tiny messy debris all over the floor.

Years ago I had a cat who LOVED to scratch on a piece of astroturf (super cheap at a home improvement store). She loved it and it was so different in texture from anything else in the house that she never touched anything else. Who knows if your cats would take to something like that, but thought I'd mention it FWIW.

Put catnip on it, this will help.

We do not have any cats now, but when we did ours liked to scratch on these wooden paddles with hemp cord wrapped around them. We had 2 or 3 of them just on the floor near the carpets that they were tempted to scratch, and they developed a strong preference for the cord on the paddles.