Cat Training

Is your little tiger driving you up the wall with one of the following cat problems?

Biting And Scratching You

Cats naturally have a lot of energy. If you keep kitty indoors, he may not be getting enough stimulation and may be overly enthusiastic when playing with you. It is best if you can schedule some regular playtimes with your cat to bleed off some of this excess energy. Often, you will find that he will stop biting and scratching you too hard all on his own.

You probably don’t want to bleed while waiting for kitty to calm down. Instead of rough-housing with him, play with him using some kitty toys instead. Try a squeeking rubber mouse, or a ball. You can also dangle something on a toy fishing pole for him to chase.

Don’t punish your cat if he plays too rough. Just immediately stop playing with him and don’t pay any more attention to him until he calms down. If he chases after you, you may need to confine him in a room on his own.

Fighting With Another Cat

What looks like fighting to you may be just playing to your cats! The fine line between playing and fighting is this: are they hurting each other?

Very often, the fighting is started by one cat. If you observe carefully, you will find that one of your cats frequently tries to ambush the other cat. A simple way to stop this problem is to hang a bell on the collar of this cat. This makes it harder for him to ambush the other cat, and will help to reduce the fights.

One more thing you can do is to trim the nails of the more aggressive cat. You can ask your vet to show you how to do this. With shorter nails, he won’t be able to hurt the other cat as much.

Scratching Your Furniture

Unfortunately, this problem behavior is not possible to stop. What you can do is redirect kitty’s attention to something else more acceptable to scratch, like a scratching post. You will need to experiment to discover which type of scratching posts your cat likes best. At the same time, you need to make it unpleasant for kitty to scratch your furniture. One way is to apply a kind of sticky pad to the surfaces which he likes to scratch. You can buy this sticky pad from your local pet shop. Keep scratching posts near all the surfaces which kitty likes to scratch, and he will quickly shift his attentions to these posts.

Spraying And Marking Territory

This is sometimes the toughest behavior to deal with, because there can be many reasons for cat spraying. The first step is to make sure all your cats are spayed or neutered. Spayed and neutered cats are less territorial, and rarely spray.

Sometimes your cats spray because they feel stressed. This could be caused by a change in your schedule, or the introduction of a new cat, or even by extra noise from road repairs outside your home.

Other times, if you have too many cats in your home, one or more of your cats will spray.

So, how can you stop this problem? First, you need to identify the reason for spraying, then eliminate that reason. Unfortunately, this is easier to say than to do. In May 2004, the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists published a case study where they took 3 or 4 years to stop this cat spraying and urination problem.

You may want to get some help from your vet. In some cases, he might prescribe some kind of cat Prozac which could help reduce the stress your cat is feeling. This would reduce the spraying problem.

Dealing with cat problems is tough unless you know kitty well. Sometimes, it can be very helpful to ask a third party like your vet for some help and advice.

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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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