Hi there,
I am posting with regards to my cats behaviour that, despite several efforts and methods used to try and better it, simply will not change.
She is almost 4-5 months old and a really beautiful cat, and the fact we do really love her, as well as the amount of money we have spent on her, are a few factors that are making us keep her at the moment. She is so badly behaved, constantly, that it is making my partner (mostly) regret getting her to the point where she is having to take time away from the cat because she stresses her out too much.
Bad behaviour includes:
-Biting and attacking of hands, wrists, feet, toes, hair.
-Runs up to us and attacks us out of nowhere
-Scratches everything and is ruining our apartment.
-When she lays behind us she'll suddenly attack our heads from out of nowhere.
-She'll just suddenly launch herself at pieces of furniture and attack them.
-Scratches at and breaks doors when we shut her in another room.
-When we let her in the bedroom she runs around on the bed like a maniac and attacks anything that moves, and then runs onto the pillows and attacks our hair, and sometimes her claws find our eyes. (We have tried not moving at all, and she just attacks us because she can feel us under the covers.)
-She'll randomly go into aggressive mode where she'll run at everything as though she's burning off energy, and her playing becomes far rougher than usual (which is saying something).
None of this is done out of anger, but being playful, we can tell that much. We have tried so many methods to try and correct her behaviour but nothing works.
-We play with her to encourage her not to attack us. She still does.
-We try and reward her for playing with toys that aren't our body parts. She still thinks its acceptable to attack us.
-We ignored her when she attacked us for a while, but it seems without receiving some form of warning or punishment she just continues until she hurts us too much where we have to throw her off of us.
-We tried pushing toward her when she attacks to try and confuse her as we'd heard that isn't what a predator would expect. She just takes that movement as encouragement.
-We have probably spent about $400 between us on 'environmental stimulation' such as trees, towers, tunnels, scratching posts to try and stop her being bored and attacking us, and although she uses them a lot, she gets herself all worked up and then attacks us.
-We have tried taking her toys away at night to encourage her to settle down. It doesn't work.
-We have tried putting her in 'time out' in a different room, but she soon ends up scratching the bottom of the door to shreds in a rented apartment (not ideal!). When we go to bed we have to shut her out because all she does is attack us; mostly our hair. She starts scratching and pulling apart the bottom of the door, also waking us up, so we put her in another room, and she does the same to that door and the only other place she can go is in her cat carrier (which we don't want to do because she can't access her litter box etc.)
-We have tried water spray bottles. They worked at first, but now she just sits there and takes it, runs off for a second and then comes back.
-Yelling at her works temporarily, and then she'll try again at what she was doing.
-When she is well behaved, it's only until we leave the room and she starts doing what she knows she shouldn't. (scratching stuff and jumping onto/burrowing into stuff that could be dangerous to her).
-'Licks' (tasty, edible relaxers) have little to no effect on her.
-We've tried encouraging good behaviour such as sitting with us or sitting on her tree with treats. Doesn't stop her behaving badly at all.
-We have tried making hissing noises when she does something bad to us or near us. She flinches, and then continues.
-We have tried crying out in pain when she hurts us. She just continues doing what she's doing as though it actually encourages her.
-We have tried blowing in her face to stop her being bad. She flinches and continues.
-We've tried 'baby talking' to make her calmer and not encourage her to act out with harsh noises. Has no effect.
-Orange peels are the only repellent that seem to deter her, but I'd hardly call it practical to have orange peels all over the apartment and all over us.
-We don't want to 'just get another cat', as one is more than we can handle at the moment, not to mention all the extra vet fees etc. Our apartment isn't big enough for two cats to be running around.
We feed her raw meat, so we're not sure if that triggers a more predatory reaction. She tries to cover her food like she would do to her poop in a litter box as though she's covering it for later in the wild. We've heard that feeding a cat raw meat can bring out a more wild nature, but we don't want to feed her anything else. We want her to be healthy and eat what she's supposed to.
It just seems that she's responding to nothing and just wants to attack everything that moves and/or makes a noise and it's starting to drive us insane because we just want her to sit with us and not hurt us. It is making us regret getting her and we just want to make it work because we do love her with all our hearts, but she's making it extremely difficult. We don't want to regret getting her. We're both busy people and constantly have to keep an eye on where she is in case she's doing something she shouldn't, which is 90% of the time. It's stressing us both out and we're literally losing sleep because of her behaviour.
I've looked on multiple pages listing behavioural correction methods. Watched plenty of youtube videos of the same. None of the suggested methods work.
Is this normal? Should a cat be responding to these kinds of deterrents?
I'd appreciate any suggestions, because we are running out of ideas.
Thanks.
I am posting with regards to my cats behaviour that, despite several efforts and methods used to try and better it, simply will not change.
She is almost 4-5 months old and a really beautiful cat, and the fact we do really love her, as well as the amount of money we have spent on her, are a few factors that are making us keep her at the moment. She is so badly behaved, constantly, that it is making my partner (mostly) regret getting her to the point where she is having to take time away from the cat because she stresses her out too much.
Bad behaviour includes:
-Biting and attacking of hands, wrists, feet, toes, hair.
-Runs up to us and attacks us out of nowhere
-Scratches everything and is ruining our apartment.
-When she lays behind us she'll suddenly attack our heads from out of nowhere.
-She'll just suddenly launch herself at pieces of furniture and attack them.
-Scratches at and breaks doors when we shut her in another room.
-When we let her in the bedroom she runs around on the bed like a maniac and attacks anything that moves, and then runs onto the pillows and attacks our hair, and sometimes her claws find our eyes. (We have tried not moving at all, and she just attacks us because she can feel us under the covers.)
-She'll randomly go into aggressive mode where she'll run at everything as though she's burning off energy, and her playing becomes far rougher than usual (which is saying something).
None of this is done out of anger, but being playful, we can tell that much. We have tried so many methods to try and correct her behaviour but nothing works.
-We play with her to encourage her not to attack us. She still does.
-We try and reward her for playing with toys that aren't our body parts. She still thinks its acceptable to attack us.
-We ignored her when she attacked us for a while, but it seems without receiving some form of warning or punishment she just continues until she hurts us too much where we have to throw her off of us.
-We tried pushing toward her when she attacks to try and confuse her as we'd heard that isn't what a predator would expect. She just takes that movement as encouragement.
-We have probably spent about $400 between us on 'environmental stimulation' such as trees, towers, tunnels, scratching posts to try and stop her being bored and attacking us, and although she uses them a lot, she gets herself all worked up and then attacks us.
-We have tried taking her toys away at night to encourage her to settle down. It doesn't work.
-We have tried putting her in 'time out' in a different room, but she soon ends up scratching the bottom of the door to shreds in a rented apartment (not ideal!). When we go to bed we have to shut her out because all she does is attack us; mostly our hair. She starts scratching and pulling apart the bottom of the door, also waking us up, so we put her in another room, and she does the same to that door and the only other place she can go is in her cat carrier (which we don't want to do because she can't access her litter box etc.)
-We have tried water spray bottles. They worked at first, but now she just sits there and takes it, runs off for a second and then comes back.
-Yelling at her works temporarily, and then she'll try again at what she was doing.
-When she is well behaved, it's only until we leave the room and she starts doing what she knows she shouldn't. (scratching stuff and jumping onto/burrowing into stuff that could be dangerous to her).
-'Licks' (tasty, edible relaxers) have little to no effect on her.
-We've tried encouraging good behaviour such as sitting with us or sitting on her tree with treats. Doesn't stop her behaving badly at all.
-We have tried making hissing noises when she does something bad to us or near us. She flinches, and then continues.
-We have tried crying out in pain when she hurts us. She just continues doing what she's doing as though it actually encourages her.
-We have tried blowing in her face to stop her being bad. She flinches and continues.
-We've tried 'baby talking' to make her calmer and not encourage her to act out with harsh noises. Has no effect.
-Orange peels are the only repellent that seem to deter her, but I'd hardly call it practical to have orange peels all over the apartment and all over us.
-We don't want to 'just get another cat', as one is more than we can handle at the moment, not to mention all the extra vet fees etc. Our apartment isn't big enough for two cats to be running around.
We feed her raw meat, so we're not sure if that triggers a more predatory reaction. She tries to cover her food like she would do to her poop in a litter box as though she's covering it for later in the wild. We've heard that feeding a cat raw meat can bring out a more wild nature, but we don't want to feed her anything else. We want her to be healthy and eat what she's supposed to.
It just seems that she's responding to nothing and just wants to attack everything that moves and/or makes a noise and it's starting to drive us insane because we just want her to sit with us and not hurt us. It is making us regret getting her and we just want to make it work because we do love her with all our hearts, but she's making it extremely difficult. We don't want to regret getting her. We're both busy people and constantly have to keep an eye on where she is in case she's doing something she shouldn't, which is 90% of the time. It's stressing us both out and we're literally losing sleep because of her behaviour.
I've looked on multiple pages listing behavioural correction methods. Watched plenty of youtube videos of the same. None of the suggested methods work.
Is this normal? Should a cat be responding to these kinds of deterrents?
I'd appreciate any suggestions, because we are running out of ideas.
Thanks.
