The Problem with Wood or Bamboo DPNs

Wood and Bamboo DPNs are cheap and readily available, which is a good thing because they don't last long. My cats like to chew on them. They (the cats) wait until you have to answer the phone or until the water for your tea boils and then they do this:

Those are just the needles from the past two days. Even if you're really disciplined and always put your knitting away so your cats can't get at it, eventually they (the needles) will look like this:

The steel needle is nice and straight. The wood needles, not so much. She (the worst offender of the needle chewing cats) looks like this:

Isn't she adorable? Good thing. If she weren't so cute, I'd have drop kicked her furry little but into oblivion long ago. Anyway, I prefer steel needles but use wood or bamboo for socks because steel is too slippery. However, someone pointed out in a discussion on Ravelry that you can take the gloss off of steel needles with a very fine grit emery paper. I'm more than willing to invest in steel DPNs just for sock knitting. I don't want to rough up the DPNs that I use for sweaters but it's worth it to order steel needles just for socks if it means never having to put aside a project until I can get to the LYS to buy more wood needles that will only be sacrificed to Fraulein Feline.