I had just rescued a little fur-ball that my wife picked out around Christmas.
So far she has been good about not scratching anything *knocks on wood table*. Love to scratch the shoe mat by the front door, and just dig her claws into the scratch post. She leaves my games alone, but loves to jump onto my Street Fighter II machine and look down and watch everything going on. She jumps from the back side off my slot machine, so she isn't digging her claws into anything, and jumps from the machine to the couch to get off.
Cats love high places, and anywhere they can sit and watch you. She tried sitting on the CP, and since my dynamo CP has a tilt to it. She got up on there from my game stool and started to walk across, tripped over one of the joysticks and tumbled off. LOL Didn't really land on her feet, so she has stayed off. They don't like to be on anything that is not sturdy, or easy to fall from.
So the easiest way I kept a cat from jumping on to something was to tilt it and make them fall. They tend not to trust the said platform anymore to be on it.