Those are the scars of love 💕
I love wrasslin with kittens.
If you’re looking for a way to stop this behavior, you grab them by the scruff of their neck. Don’t worry, it doesn’t actually hurt the cat. But it does trigger senses in them that they’re being disciplined. So you grab the scuff of their neck, and act like your wrist is hurt. (the one they were biting/clawing, not the one you’re using to grab the scruff of their neck).
Once they realize they’re hurting you, and also realize you can grab them by the scruff of their neck, and are therefore more powerful than them, they’ll stop doing that.
Of coarse, this is also assuming you’re being a good cat parent to begin with. I see so many videos online titled “Cats go crazy” or something similiar. They aren’t going crazy. Their humans are usually doing some shit to repeatedly piss off their cat. And eventually the cat says “FUCK THIS!!!” and lashes out.
As long as the cat routinely feels safe, and loved with you, the scruff thing works. If your cat feels unwelcome in it’s own home, yes, it will lash out.
Also don’t play fight with a cat, especially a kitten using your hand. If you want to play fight use a stuffed animal or something. Teach them from an early age that human hands are not toys.
My cat would be really confused and probably a bit frightened at this point if I tried to roughhouse with her using my hand but if I get her “battle buddy” stuffed animal out it’s on.
So, are hand puppets a middle ground?
OOOOH! Yes. That’s another good point that I never even thought about. I just naturally never used my hands, because I don’t like it anyways, but I always used a feather on a stick/string.
Another thing I never use is laserpens. I used to. I feel bad that I ever did. It’s fun, but then you learn that cats play is only stimulating their hunting drives. And since they can catch the feather on a string, they feel a sense of satisfaction for having caught it. Whereas they can’t catch a red dot. So never catching it apparently gives them PTSD. They feel depressed that they can’t be good hunters if they can’t catch the red dot.
If you were using both, it was probably okay. The cat quickly learns the red dot is a lie and either decides not to chase it, or decides it’s good for a bit of pouncing and then grabs a different toy to fight or a snack of kibble to bite.
Depends on the cat too. I’ve got one right now that only wants to chase, not catch. He doesn’t care about catching the feather on the string, or the toy that I throw, he just wants an excuse to go zoom.
It’d be nice if he could figure out how to fetch though. I’ll throw a toy, and he’ll go racing after it, but then when he gets to it he just comes back to me so I can throw another one.
One of mine. She’s only interested as long as it’s moving. I once woke up to her with a mouse in her mouth, then she dropped it because it wasn’t doing anything.
The mouse was safely corraled into a tshirt and let outside. His siblings were less fortunate and met the elder floof who is part maine coon and all murder machine.
My partner and I foster cats, and most of them love it when we roll toys back and forth between each other for them to chase/intercept. One time we decided to use an “invisible toy” where we just brushed our knuckles against the carpet as if we were rolling/catching something, and our poor foster kitty freaked the fuck out and it took a good 10 minutes or so for him to get back to baseline after we realized we should stop. Never done that bit again 😅
If i used the laserpen, i made it a rule to always at the end put some treats somewhere and point the laser there, which seems to be adequate compensation for their effort ;-)
Play fighting is fine, they just need to learn claw control. Recoil and stop play when you get clawed. I’ve got three cats here I can wrestle with without getting a mark on my hands or arms. A long thick jumper they know is safe, but bare skin they know is not for claws. It’s so well learned that even when you need to do some maintenance or intervention they don’t like, they will not claw you. Like washing diarrhea out of their fur, or some emergency medical intervention.
Yeah I lived with someone who ruined the cat by rough housing with bare skin… I have extremely fragile skin and will bleed from touching the edge of cardboard, so you can imagine what cat claws do to me. Even the cat gently dragging it’s nail across my skin will cut me open like a sausage. It took so, so long to unlearn those habits from the cat…
What worked for us is getting cat locked on a kitchen for some 5-10 minutes if it misbehaves, alongside the already mentioned loudly make noise to show that it hurts.
Like, you make pain = we are not playing with you. It didn’t take long for her to learn to hide her claws and stop eating electric cables.
Cats eating electric cubes reminds me of the Transformers cartoon from the 80s. That decepticon guy with the cassette player in his chest.
hmm that might have been a better strategy than i used. my first cat isnt a biter but she was very liberal with her use of claws when i got her. she would have them out for anything from cuddles to playtime. i got her to be more careful around me by just playing up my pain response every time she got me with her claws. id jump and yelp like she really hurt me. she eventually learned but it would have been cool if she learned faster lol.
I had to hold down one of my kittens to give him his spot-on flea treatment and felt bad afterwards. They’ve never scratched me. They just get so excited to be pet I thought I’d miss. I was like “You’re cute, but this stuff is expensive”
Oh man. You just reminded me of the time I had to give my cat a flea bath. That was like 20 years ago, but I still remfmber I had to wrap her in a thick towel to act essentially as a cat straight jacket. I kept her head free, but everything below the neck was in a towel.
Oooooooh boy did she growl.
I hated it, but it had to be done. We got rid of those fleas. And all it cost was traumatizing my baby…and myself. Because I know she hated it. I at least made sure the water was luke warm, so she wouldn’t be cold, or too hot. But still…she HATED that bath.
Just do not do this with an adult cat. At best they won’t react the way you need them to, at worst it could cause actual trauma to the cat and reduce their trust in you. You’re effectively mimicking what a predator like a fox would do to an adult cat and it can make them absolutely freak the f out.
Hands aren’t toys! (At least in my household)
If the cat does that, it’s because it doesn’t actually understand that it’s hurting you.
Start making a big “YELP” and clearly show that you are in pain when it does it, and it will gradually start to be more gentle.
It doesn’t understand that you don’t have fur that protects it the way it does.
I did this so often with puppies and kittens over the years that I had to unlearn it when dealing with women, lol. Believe it or not if a woman bites you yelping isn’t the response they are looking for. Well results may vary I suppose…
that’s really fucking funny
ty for the laugh :)
Can confirm this works, unless he gets too excited my cat is very careful about keeping his claws retracted. To the point that one time he actually slapped the absolute fuck out of my leg, that actually made a slap sound and stung a tiny bit from his pawpads slapping me, without leaving a claw mark. Chaotic little beast.
This is the way
This is how I taught my cat.
He still tries to use his claws like tiny fingers sometimes, but he really doesn’t mean it.
This stopped real quick with my cat. Anytime he would try to bite me, I would just shove my finger down his throat. Don’t worry it didn’t hurt him but it did trigger his gag reflex lol now at most he will lightly bite if he doesn’t like something. He doesn’t use his claws on me as well.
You don’t have to gag them. Just press your finger sideways into their back teeth so they can’t close the bite. They’ll immediately try and push out your finger with their tongue. It stops being a game for them real quick.
But this is also a last resort. They’re are better techniques as discussed in other comments. The earlier the intervention the easier they learn.
In my area it’s become lore that cats only biting becuase they didn’t grow up with other kittens to give them social feedback for bites. The the point where the shelters will insist kittens be adopted in pairs.
It seems like an insanely lazy approach to me. Like getting two dogs so they’ll play without other and leave you alone.
Interesting. These were older adopted cats; okay well my sister left them with me when she had kids. It was a fun transition for them. The one that took me as his master or whatever; hissed at me the first day so I raised my arms up and hissed right back at him. That was then end of that and he follows me around like a dog. It’s always funny when he comes to comfort me when I get pissed off in a comp game.
I think I only had to do the gag thing like three times, he’s a fast learner.
The pairs thing is actually important in my opinion, they like to play with each other once in a while or run around like idiots crashing into stuff (tile floors). My mum also tells me how he loses his shit when I go to work. I went overseas for a few weeks and when I got back he wouldn’t leave my side for at least a week and I mean following me everywhere. I love cats, had em all my life.
So that definitely worked with my void too
Fuk all this good advice. Rock on w your kitty. Looks like fun.
It is fun and i really dont care about the scratches.
One of my cats grabs my hand or my arm to the point where she could tear me apart and then starts licking my hand instead. She is realy cute.
She also is super carefukl with hwr claws when plating with me. Just enough to pin my arm.
You need to get help. Despite what you may think you deserve a loving relationship with someone who doesn’t hurt you.
i don’t come here to get called out lik this 🫠
My rescue cat (2 years in October) does this with my wife. The exception being, once the cat ‘catches’ her, it’s a half second of confusion then lots of licking.
This is a product of both participants and a behavior that can be changed pver time.
I’d say this is PvP, not PvE.
Someone pointed out how me saying it was my fault my cat scratched and hurt me sounded like a textbook abusive relationship. Is there a way to unlearn things?
there certainly is but it requires consistent intention
it sure isn’t easy, but you can do it. I believe in you <3
At least snip their nails ;-;
I would often wrap an old sweater around my hand to do this with my old cat. When he was really into it I could pick him while he was still attached to my sweater hand.
