How do you solve a problem like Elwood?

Mabel tries to cure her depression by sleeping in the sun for a bit.

Things have been good for a while with the cats. In retrospect it seems obvious that it was merely a honeymoon period of sorts. During that glorious time, as long as we kept the cats on different levels of the house (and they actually seemed to keep to their separate levels without much help from us) everything was fine. Good times.

Now, to backtrack a bit, Mabel has been a bit upset ever since Elwood arrived. And, now that she no longer has access to the cat scratching post squirreled away downstairs she has taken to exercising her claws on our lovely rugs. It's a problem. So, last night we did the seemingly intelligent thing and bought her a cardboard cat scratching thingy (that's the technical term) from Trader Joe's. The kind filled to the brim with catnip.

We took it out of the box, set it down and she immediately draped herself all over it. She was having a great time. She wasn't clawing it like a normal kitty--it was more like she was trying to ingest it-- but she was obviously enjoying it. We left her in the kitchen enjoying her spoils, and went to catch up on a bit of Tivo.

An hour or so later, Mabel came running in and that's when I noticed a faint rustling noise. Upon investigation, we discovered that Elwood had sneaked upstairs and pissed all over her new precious.

I put him outside, but the damage had been done. Toy ruined. Surprise, surprise, cardboard just doesn't hold up to cat urine.

A bit later I hear another strange rustling noise in the kitchen, and sneak in to discover Mabel up on the counter desperately pawing at the bag of extra catnip which came with said scratcher (huzzah for Trader Joe's--they really go all out with the catnip) trying to get a fix. I guess I should knit up some quick cat toys--nothing large enough to be peed on though...

Any ideas? Catnip free house? How do we solve the scratching problem sans a literal pissing contest?

These cats are making me crazy, and these pretzels are making me thirsty!