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.
I tried to tell my wife this, multiple times. Now she wonders why the cat plays gentle with me but rough as hell with her.
She (the cat) will still attack my hand, but without claws or biting hard. She’ll even get under the blankets to fight me through them.
The way I accomplished this was by teaching her that if she got too rough it meant no more playing for about an hour. Since she always wants to play, it was an effective deterrent.
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 have a cat who my roommate 13 years ago taught to play with his hand, and let him bite and scratch as hard as he wanted. He would bite hard. It took a while, but I got him to stop by just immobilizing my hand when he started latching on, which made him lose interest and loosen his grip. I’d also give him a high-pitched “ooow” as an audible cue. Once I got my hand out I would poke his nose and say “no bites” then pet him on his forehead. Every once in a while he still regresses, but instead of biting now he almost always just aggressively headbutts your hand.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I tried to tell my wife this, multiple times. Now she wonders why the cat plays gentle with me but rough as hell with her.
She (the cat) will still attack my hand, but without claws or biting hard. She’ll even get under the blankets to fight me through them.
The way I accomplished this was by teaching her that if she got too rough it meant no more playing for about an hour. Since she always wants to play, it was an effective deterrent.
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 have a cat who my roommate 13 years ago taught to play with his hand, and let him bite and scratch as hard as he wanted. He would bite hard. It took a while, but I got him to stop by just immobilizing my hand when he started latching on, which made him lose interest and loosen his grip. I’d also give him a high-pitched “ooow” as an audible cue. Once I got my hand out I would poke his nose and say “no bites” then pet him on his forehead. Every once in a while he still regresses, but instead of biting now he almost always just aggressively headbutts your hand.
So, are hand puppets a middle ground?
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.
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.
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.