Cat Training

Cat biting is the second most common cat behavioral problem after inappropriate cat peeing. Many cat owners just do not understand cat biting behavior, and fail to deal with it properly. Some owners get into a bad relationship with their cats, and end up putting them under. This is very sad. Do not let this happen to you and your cat.

The first question you want to ask yourself is: Does the biting draw blood, and when does it happen? If your cat bites you very often, and frequently draws blood, this is a behavior you want to stop. The best way is to carry a squeeze bottle of water with you. Anytime you are bitten, immediately spray a little bit of water at your cat’s face. You want to lightly shock kitty, not drench it. This sends a message to him that biting is not appropriate behavior. If you do this immediately and consistently, you will eventually break your cat of this problem behavior.

Sometimes, you are having fun with kitty, either petting him or playing with him, and he suddenly bites you. You want to take note of his body language – is he sending you a message to “STOP!”, or has he just switched to a different game? If he is telling you to stop, then you should stop. Maybe he has gotten bored, or just wants to do something else. You need to respect your cat – that is the only way to have a good relationship with him. On the other hand, if he has switched to a different game, then the ball is in your court. Do you want to play this new game, where he bites you? Or do you want to stop?

Now, you need to know the difference between your cat biting you and nipping you. One draws blood, the other does not. Cat bites which draw blood can be potentially dangerous, and is a behavioral problem you should stop. If kitty just nips you playfully, or gnaws on your knuckles or toes, he is just showing that he loves you. All of you new cat owners out there – this is NOT a problem. Repeat: this is not a problem.

Some cats just do not know how to control their strength. Sometimes, they were removed from their litter-mates or mother too early, and never learned that biting too hard is wrong. Other times, it is the fault of their owners. You may have unknowingly encouraged the cat biting problem. Either way, playtime can get pretty painful – unless you start using cat toys. A plushie or soft, stuffed toy is good. Let kitty play and wrestle with it instead of your fingers. You will both have fun without the pain. Another good toy is a little ball which bounces well. Or something which you can drag along the ground and let your cat chase after it.

Remember, do not over-react when your cat bites you. You need to be sensitive to your cat’s moods – is the biting a message, and when is it a behavior problem you need fix?

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Does your cat frequently bite or scratch people or other pets? This means it may be showing signs of aggression. Cat aggression can be dangerous and should not be tolerated. This does not mean you should punish your cat. On the contrary, you should diagnose the underlying cause of your cat’s aggression and get it properly treated. Below is a list of 9 common causes of aggressive behavior in your cat:

1. Pain Aggression – if your home environment remains the same, but your cat suddenly becomes aggressive, it may be because of some sudden sickness. For example, arthritis, dental problems or some other painful condition could cause your cat to become aggressive.
2. Play Aggression – your cat likes to play rough, biting and scratching you. Or it likes to stalk you or ambush you. In many cases, this is because your cat was taken away from its mother too soon, so it did not learn to moderate its aggression when playing. Another reason could be that you rough-house with your cat too much, hence conditioning it to be aggressive when playing.
3. Fear Aggression – kitty hisses, bares her teeth, and crouches low with its tail and legs tucked under its body. Its ears are flat against its head, its pupils are dilated, and its fur stands on end. These are signs that your cat is afraid of something, and is preparing to protect itself.
4. Predatory Aggression – your cat attacks your pet bird, or some other small animal like a mouse. This aggressiveness is actually your cat’s natural heritage: to hunt prey. Unfortunately, since these are modern times, and we are discussing your pet cat rather than some farm cat, this predatory behavior is probably not desirable.
5. Redirected Aggression – something seems to be provoking your cat, but when you approach it, it attacks you instead. Cats are no more logical than human beings. This is like your father becoming pissed off by something at work, then coming home and taking out his anger on you.
6. Petting Aggression – just like kids, a little bit of attention is great, but too much will set them off. You could be happily petting or playing with kitty just moments ago, but it suddenly became aggressive.
7. Status Aggression – your cat is trying to show you who’s boss. The symptoms are usually tail swishing, flattened ears, dilated pupils, growling, and hissing.
8. Territorial Aggression – you bring home a new cat or some other pet, and kitty chases or attacks it. Unneutered tomcats can be especially aggressive in defending their territory.
9. Maternal Aggression – your cat just gave birth, and will not allow you to get near her kittens.

This is not a comprehensive list, but should cover most cases of aggression. Not all causes of cat aggression can be treated. Some, like redirected aggression or maternal aggression, require that you recognize it and adapt yourself to it. Others, like pain aggression, will disappear once you remove the cause of pain.

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Does your cat or kitten defecate and urinate all over your house? Is this driving you nuts? Then you need to train them to use the litter box. First, you do know what a litter box is, right? I am not being sarcastic here, but I know of some cat owners who have no idea that these things exist. And second, you have to accept as a fact, that cats can be trained. Some cat owners allow their cats to run wild, adamantly refusing to believe that cats can be trained.

Assuming that you accept that you can train your cat not to mess up all over your home, how do you do so? To start, you need to gather some intelligence. You need to know when and where your cats like to defecate and urinate. And you need to learn how to recognize the signs when they are going to shit and pee. Luckily, cats are creatures of habit. They like to do their business in the same places, around the same times. Most cats eliminate when they wake up, after they eat or after they exercise. They usually go to some corner or behind a piece of furniture and sniff the floor there just before elimination.

Next, you need to prepare a litter box in a quiet, out of the way location. Just like you, your cat prefers to have privacy during the process of elimination. The litter box should have high sides to keep the litter in when your cat scratches in it. The litter itself should be clumpable and scoopable. You have to remember to clean the litter box everyday, and replace the litter every week. Cats are clean and fastidious creatures, so if you fail to keep their litter box clean, they will soon start doing their business elsewhere. There is one additional point regarding the litter – do not change brands. Once your cat gets used to a particular brand of kitty litter, it will refuse to use another brand. If you are forced to change to another litter, you will need to retrain your cat.

As the final step, of course, you need to train your cat to use the litter box. Every time you see your cat giving its signal, you need to carry it to the litter box. This action does two things. It breaks your cat’s habit of eliminating in its old spot, and it conditions your cat to eliminate in the litter box. Immediately after it uses the litter box, you should also give it a treat or reward. This further reinforces the new habit of eliminating in the litter box. Obviously, your cat will refuse to use the litter box in the beginning. Do not scold or beat him. You do not want kitty to associate the litter box with punishment. Otherwise it will learn to deliberately avoid the litter box, which is not what you want. Just be patient and consistent and your cat will eventually learn to do its business in the right place – the litter box.

Follow these steps and your cat will stop making a mess all over your house. You will only need to clean the litter box, instead of having to track down every spot kitty makes a mess.

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Playing with kitty – that’s why we become cat owners, isn’t it? But what happens when play turns to pain, when kitty starts biting and scratching and drawing blood? Animal behaviorists call this play aggression, but who cares about the big words? What really matters is how you can get rid of it? First, you need to know what causes cats to become aggressive when playing with you. Once you know what causes the problem, you can learn how to fix it.

Play aggression normally occurs in kittens which are taken away from their mothers too early in life. A normal kitten, raised with littermates, quickly learns to bite and scratch with less intensity. They learn that playing rough will either cause their playmates to retaliate or to stop playing. You can recognize this behavior from the kitten’s posture. It lashes its tail, flattens its ears and its pupils dilate. This is soon followed by biting and scratching.

To correct this behavior, you need to redirect your kitten’s attention to another acceptable object. Drag kitty’s toy along the floor, or throw the toy around and let kitty chase after it. A good choice for this would be a ping pong ball or something similar which bounces nicely. A soft, stuffed toy the same size as your kitten is also good. This lets kitty wrestle with it, closely simulating the way young kittens play with each other. Encourage play with this wrestling toy when your kitten starts to play rough.

You need to keep things under control. Set up 3 or 4 consistent times everyday to play with your kitten. This conditions your kitten so that it knows not to bother you at other times.

When playing with your cat, do not encourage it to chase after your hands and feet. This can also cause play aggression. In addition, if your cat tries to play with you outside your scheduled playtimes, you should ignore it. Otherwise it will start ambushing you when you climb down the stairs, or go around a corner, or when you go to bed. That would be an accident waiting to happen.

Sometimes, just ignoring kitty does not help. In this case, try using some kind of noise maker. You just want to startle it, grab its attention and break its momentum just before it pounces on you. Never physically strike your cat. A painful strike will make your cat afraid of you and avoid you. On the other hand, a harmless strike will just encourage it to continue its behavior. Either way, this is not what you want.

To enjoy playtime with your cat, you need to contain its aggression. Follow these tips consistently and with patience, and you will be able to have fun playing with your cat.

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Is your cat’s bad behavior driving you up the wall? Many people are under the impression that cats are too independent to be trained. This is not true. Any animal can be trained. You just need to condition its reactions in a consistent and predictable manner. Animal behaviorists call this Pavlovian Conditioning. Although the most famous of the experiments revolved around dogs, subsequent scientists have successfully shown this effect even in human children. In other words, this effect is the basis of all successful animal training methods, from dogs to rats to lions.

Now, conditioning and punishment do not mean the same thing. You do not need to hurt your cat when it misbehaves, you just need to clearly demonstrate that its behavior is unacceptable. So, how do you do that? All you need are a number of spray water bottles filled with cold water, placed in convenient locations around your house. Anytime you see your cat doing something wrong, you immediately spray its body with cold water. This method gets your cats attention and annoys it but does not hurt it. You are not punishing your cat. You are interrupting it in the middle of its misbehavior. Do this consistently and immediately and you will eventually break your cat of its bad habits. An obvious limitation of this method is that if you are not around when kitty misbehaves, it will not work.

Here is a method of deterrence which works even when you are not at home. If your cat eats or scratches your houseplants, you can try putting mothballs in them. Cats are sensitive to the strong smell, and this will keep your cat away from your plants. You can also use the same trick to keep your cat from urinating and defecating in inappropriate locations.

Another problem which you may face as a cat owner is having your cat scratch your furniture or carpet. First, you need to know that your cat is only doing what comes naturally and you should not stop it from scratching. The scratching is meant to maintain its claws in good condition and also to stretch and tone its muscles. If you punish it for scratching, you will confuse it and this will lead to further bad behavior. What you want to do is minimize the damage it can do. Just trim its claws. If you do not know how, get a veterinarian to trim them for you. Ask your vet to teach you. You also want to redirect your cat’s attention from your carpet or furniture to another target. If your cat likes to scratch vertical surfaces, then get it a vertical scratching post. Ditto for horizontal surfaces.

Try these tips for stopping your cat’s bad behavior. You do not have to be cruel and punish kitty. Just take some suitable preventative measures to interrupt or prevent its bad behavior. Be consistent, be firm and patient in keeping the bad behavior from turning into bad habits.

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Owners of male cats face extra challenges as their tomcats often have additional behavior problems compared to female cats. The first of these is that they are more active and need to find the companionship of female cats. As a side-effect of this need, male cats frequently try to leave home. It is not quite running away, as they are quite willing to come home after doing the deed. The problem is that they face a lot of danger outside the house. They will get into fights with other male cats. They may also get run down by traffic. These additional worries of owning tomcats can certainly give their owners premature grey hair.

For these reasons, vets and many animal rights groups strongly recommend that owners neuter their tomcats. Neutered male cats lose that urge to wander, making it easier to keep them close to home. They will stop chasing after the female cats in heat, and stop aggressively fighting with rival tomcats. No more wandering and less fighting – all these mean they are less likely to get badly hurt outside the home. One more side benefit is that they will not produce stray kittens from their unauthorized rendezvous with female cats.

Many vets prefer to err on the side of caution and will not to neuter male cats until they are one year old. Others are willing to do it as early as four months old, as some newer studies indicate that younger neutered tomcats do not show adverse reactions. The earlier you get your tomcat neutered, the better. They are less likely to develop the habits of fighting, wandering and chasing after female cats. Despite this, neutering them late is better than not neutering them at all. As long as the habit is no longer being driven by natural instinct, it can be broken and replaced with something else.

Still, neutered or not, tomcats do tend to be more aggressive. While you can never get rid of this aggression completely, you can reduce it over time. One simple way is to put a collar with a bell on your male cat. What does this do? Often, your male cat likes to attack other animals. It will stalk them, and ambush them. It is obvious that the attacker often has the initiative in a fight. If your tomcat can surprise the other cat and pounce first, it is more likely to win the fight. While winning is generally a good thing, in this case it only encourages your cat to get into more fights. Once you bell your tomcat, it will have more difficulty stalking and successfully attacking other cats and animals. Slowly, it will lose the urge to get into fights.

Another problem more common to male cats is spraying. Spraying is different from urination. For one thing, it usually affects vertical surfaces like walls. Your cat does it to mark its territory. Common litter training techniques will not help. Neither will punishment. One thing you can do is to learn where your tomcat’s favorite spraying locations are, and clean it with some form of enzymatic solution. Normal cleaners will not work – they do not remove the underlying odors of male cat urine. Your vet or local pet shop will probably have something suitable for you. After cleaning, you can spray one of those “pet behave sprays” to keep kitty away.

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Rip! Rip! Riiiip! Oh no, your cat is scratching the sofa again! Do you have this problem – kitty scratching and shredding your sofa, the legs of your expensive dining table, or your wall-to-wall carpet? Many people face this problem, and it frustrates them no end. Too many cat owners resort to scolding and punishment, and are frustrated and puzzled when it fails to do any good. Some owners confine kitty to a part of the house with less expensive furniture, or redecorate their home to remove cat scratching surfaces. A few buy scratching posts, and wonder why kitty still prefers that tattered sofa to the brand new expensive scratching posts. In the end, many people give up their cats, either throwing them out on the street to join the stray cat population, or surrender them to the animal shelter, where they will ultimately be put down.

The key problem is ignorance, not kitty. Too many cat owners are ignorant, and wilfully remain ignorant of why their cats scratch the furniture. They don’t know, don’t care and can’t be bothered to find out. Now, there are 5 reasons why cats scratch furniture:

• Claw maintenance – kitty is scratching to remove the dead outer layers of its claws


• Mark their territory – clawing and scratching your furniture leaves both a visual mark and a scent from the glands in their paws.


• Exercise – the motions involved in scratching stretch and tone their muscles.


• Too much energy


• To get your attention

As you can see from the list above, this is the reason that the usual deterrence measures do not work very well. For this reason, in many parts of the world, cat owners get their precious kitties declawed. Such a simple little word, yet it has such profound implications. Declawing your cat actually means that the vet is going to amputate the last joint of all kitty’s toes. Consider that the Japanese mafia’s infamous punishment for failure is chopping off the last joint of the little finger, and here you are chopping off the last joint of all of kitty’s toes. How horrible is that! Clearly, declawing is very traumatic and disfiguring to your cat. While it does resolve the scratching problem, it will actually cause potentially worse problems – spraying, urination, aggressive biting, etc.

As a cat lover, you need to learn how to use the scratching post correctly. Once again, we turn to animal behavioral science for help. You need to find out what kind of material your cat likes to scratch. The scratching post you buy needs to be of this material. You need to place the scratching post where kitty likes to scratch. And you need to patiently, lovingly and firmly redirect kitty’s scratching to the post. For this, you can use the usual reinforcement techniques. When your cat uses the scratching post, you reward it – praise kitty and give it a kitty treat.

Slowly, you will find this bad behavior of kitty fading away. You will no longer have to replace your sofa every few months. You can have tables with wooden legs again. Isn’t life so much better this way?

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Playtime with your cat can quickly become unpleasant if kitty starts biting you. Although biting and scratching is a normal part of cat behavior, a properly socialized cat knows how to control its strength. It does not usually bite or scratch to the point of drawing blood. There are several reasons why your cat can lack this self-control, and knowing why is the first step to controlling the problem.

When young kittens are taken away from their mothers too early, they fail to learn to control the strength of their biting and scratching. A kitten which spends enough time with its mother and litter mates quickly learns that biting its playmates too hard causes playtime to end. Kittens without this social skill, on the other hand, grow up into cats which bite and scratch too hard. Many owners tend to make this condition worse. When playing with their kitten or cat, they inadvertently do things which further encourage this behavior. These actions encourage and cement this behavior of biting and scratching in their cats.

This, then, is one key to controlling this playtime aggression. When kitty bites or scratches too hard, you should stop playing with it. Just ignore it – do not pay attention and do not punish your cat. Eventually, it will learn that biting and scratching too hard will lead to the end of playtime. Exactly the same as a young kitten with its mother and litter mates.

Now, sometimes it seems that both you and kitty are spending some quality time together. Both of you are having fun playing, when your cat suddenly becomes violent and bites and scratches you. There does not seem to be any reason for this sudden aggression. Some animal behaviorists believe that this happens because you have over-stimulated kitty and it is now channeling that into aggressive behavior. Regardless of the actual cause, there is agreement that there are two steps you need to take to handle this problem:

1. Be aware of your cat’s behavior during playtime. Before it starts to bite and scratch you, there will be a change of behavior – ears flattening, fur standing up, body hunching, etc. This is your window.


2. Stop petting or playing with kitty when you notice the change in behavior. Just stop – ignore your cat and go about your own business. This will usually defuse your cat’s aggression.


3. Note that this is a bit different from a kitten taken away from its mother while too young. An under-socialized kitten always bites and scratches too hard during playtime.

Cats are hunters. This is their natural instinct, and you will often see these characteristics when you play with kitty. You will see them hunched down to their belly, stalking their toy or a mouse or cockroach before pouncing on it. This can be a problem when they decide to ambush you when you are doing your chores, or just as you are going to bed. Your cat biting when under the control of its hunting instinct can be particularly painful. One way of controlling this problem is to have at least two or three regularly scheduled playtimes with kitty. You want to bleed off its excess energy regularly.

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Does your cat attack your other pets? Does it attack the new cat you brought home? Or does it fight with your pet dog? Animal behaviorists have different names for each of these behaviors. When kitty attacks your pet mouse, or the bird in the garden, it’s called predatory aggression. It is just following its natural instinct to hunt for prey. Unfortunately, it is difficult to stop this kind of behavior. The best you can do is put a collar with a bell on your cat. This will keep it from sneaking up on its prey. You should also keep your other smaller pets (like your pet hamster) away from your cat.

Fear aggression is yet another instinctive behavior. How do you recognize when kitty is frightened? It hisses, bares its teeth, and crouches low with its tail and legs tucked under its body. It flattens its ears against the head, the pupils dilate, and the fur stands on end. To the person triggering this reaction, it almost seems as if your cat has doubled in size. Just the same as a puffer fish doubling its size to frighten its enemies away. Push kitty any further and it may attack.

• So, what can you do? For a start, you should not try to pet or console your cat when it displays this frightened yet aggressive behavior. Petting your cat in this situation not only could get you hurt, it reinforces in kitty that this behavior is okay. You do not want this to happen. Even though it seems uncaring, it is better to ignore kitty in this mood.
• Where possible, you want to gradually desensitize kitty towards this trigger. Treat it like a phobia in a human being. Expose kitty to the fear trigger a safe distance away for short periods of time, and reward it with treats when it does not show aggressive behavior. Once it gets used to the trigger at a certain distance, gradually decrease the distance. Eventually, like a human being, your cat will stop being afraid.

The other kind of aggression which causes kitty to attack other animals is called territorial aggression. This mean that kitty will chase or fight with the new cat which you bring home. It is trying to protect its territory. If this happens, you will need to take their introduction to each other slowly.

• First, you need to confine both of them to their own quarters. Let them hear and smell each other, but do not allow any physical contact.
• Once they get used to each other like this, switch their quarters. Let kitty investigate the newcomer’s smell, and let the newcomer investigate kitty’s smell and its new home.
• After this, place them in the same room, but at opposite ends of the room. Let them eat, in order to condition them to associate food with each other’s presence.
• Slowly bring then closer to each other.
• Finally, free them from their carriers and feed them, while making sure they cannot attack each other.
• If they eat their food and remain calm at this stage, then you are successful. Be warned that this could take weeks and even months.

In the end, there is no single way of keeping your cat from attacking another animal. You need to be patient and use a complete process.

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