Biting / Scratching

[sirius1]

I've now had my kitten just over three weeks and his biting is terrible. It does not matter how many times I tell him "no" firmly - he just gets worse, and worse. I've tried the spray bottle approach now after two straight weeks of trying the patiently saying "no" and walking away approach and getting absolutely no where. I have never allowed him to play with my hands or feet. He doesn't learn, he's not even getting any better. He still climbs my legs whenever I'm sitting at the table, and he can be in my lap purring contentedly one minute and the next starts biting the crap out of my arms/hands. He bites my partner, my housemate, my friends ... and as he's getting stronger it's rapidly becoming not at all cute. 

Today, I lost my temper with him. I'm not proud of it, but he bit my 3 year of nephew hard enough to draw blood. Prior to biting him, he'd been sitting on my lap, purring gently, eyes mostly closed happily allowing my nephew to stroke him. My nephew had not been allowed to chase or antagonise the cat in anyway, nor was he vigorously petting him, just a couple of tentative strokes with a sleepy, happy kitten. My nephew started crying, my sister was angry and I chased the kitten around the living room with the spray bottle yelling at him and locked him in the kitchen with his box for the rest of their visit.  I'm not proud of that, but it has been 3 weeks of consistently being told no every single time he does it with absolutely no improvement.  He's worse now than he was two weeks ago. 

A friend of mine ha suggested that if he won't stop, every time he does it he should be put in his carrier for an hour. I'm not sure if that length of time is cruel or not? It seems like a very long time for a baby. 

He has a houseful of toys to bite, but when he's offered one, he's much more interested in arms. I play with him every day with both a wand with fish dangling off it and a lazer pointer. 

Anyway, I am not sure what else to do. The habit of biting and scratching hands really needs to end, especially as he really goes for it when he tries and often breaks the skin both on the biting and scratches. 

 

[mservant]

I agree with you that his biting behaviour needs to stop, and it is important he learns not to bite hands and feat quickly before he gets any bigger.  I am very sorry this happened to your little nephew and I hope your nephew is OK.  One thing that is important in working to reduce biting, scratching and other defensive behaviours in a cat is to maintain a calm environment. It is important to gain trust and not escalate the aggression.

If something happens and he bites or scratches someone, any loud noise, rapid movements and physical contact with him which restrains or hurts him will be interpreted as aggression and make him even more aggressive.  I think he is anxious and protecting himself with this behaviour. Cats are very easily over stimulated, especially if they are anxious, and Sirius is still very young and having to learn cat behaviour without his mum or siblings there and get to know you and lots of new people in his new home right now which is a hard time for him.  

There may not seem to be anything provoking Sirius when someone touches him when he is resting and calm, but a cat, especially a young kitten, can quickly feel threatened, or even startled, if they have been very relaxed and then realize they are being touched.  Sometimes they can have sensitive spots too and if you touch these the cat will react very quickly so it is important to get to know them - and then let other people know where they are.  

I noticed another thread you had a couple of days ago about Sirius limping but don't know what happened about that.  Has he been to see a vet?  It is very possible that he has pain somewhere and if you or anyone else including your nephew touched him where it hurts he would react in the only way he knows how which is to bite and try to defend himself.

The putting any cat in to a crate for an hour sounds like punishment to me, a punishment that a cat would not understand or benefit from in the way you want.  If it is not possible to calm the environment and the cat then I do support 'time out' either by the people leaving the space the cat is in, or the cat being lifted and removed, and then the door being shut, but I do not think there is benefit in continuing the separation for more than a couple of minutes as all you are doing is allowing adrenalin to reduce and for all parties to feel a bit more relaxed.   

Have a look at these TCS articles which look at how to work with a cat, and understand how they experience some of the things people try to train or discipline them with, and why aggression can happen. 

http://www.thecatsite.com/a/cats-and-discipline-dont-mix

http://www.thecatsite.com/a/cat-aggression-toward-people

http://www.thecatsite.com/a/playtime-aggression

 

[mrsfpmister]

Maybe he's also under-stimulated and trying to play? Or he is sore somewhere and saying ouch?

 

[sirius1]

I started a new practice yesterday (carrying on through today) of putting him outside the living room when I'm actively working on my thesis. This amounts to about three hour intervals, dispersed with a twenty minute or so break where I go outside, make myself some coffee, play with him, check on him etc. I'm not sure if it's improving his biting or not, but at least it's improving my temper about the behaviour because he's not attacking me when I'm trying write / process information.

I am finding I have a lot more tolerance for it when I'm grading papers or just hanging out, and am more apt to just push him away and ignore him with a firm no when he bites as the links suggest. 

For now, until he calms down a bit, I've told my sister she can't bring her kids over to play with him. They are upset, but until the biting is a bit more under control I feel too conscious to have the kids interacting with him. 

 

[plan]

Well maybe I'm cruel, but I do use the cat carrier for "time outs" when little Khal Drogo gets a little too crazy. He's got a comfortable cat bed in there and half the time he uses the time-out as an opportunity to nap, which is fine by me as long as he calms down.

The important thing is he realizes that his play time ends -- and he is relegated to the carrier -- when he starts getting out of control. So far this is working and he's much, much better about biting and scratching than he was, say, two weeks ago. He doesn't scratch anymore, at all. And when he bites, which is much more rare than it used to be, he knows not to put real force behind it.

I put him in the carrier for about 20 minutes for his "time outs," although I have put him in the carrier for longer when he wakes me up at 4 a.m. by biting like a madman. This behavior has also pretty much stopped. (I also want to make it clear that I do NOT put him in the carrier every time. He only gets the carrier when there have been plenty of warnings, and he definitely is not suffering from a lack of play, attention, or toys. And I never yell at him, I just calmly pick him up and place him in the carrier.)

Another thing that has helped enormously is trimming his claws. I watched a few good Youtube videos that showed close-up how to trim, and read up on it quite a bit. I waited until he was chill, sleepy and content after enjoying a nice meal. I got a few treats, praised him and petted him, and was able to trim all claws on his front paws the first time I attempted it. There's an added bonus for trimming too -- now he can't just "dig in" when climbing, and he's forced to use his muscles or get a running start, which is good exercise.

Here are two really good videos that show and explain how to do it without hurting your cat:

 

[fhicat]

Ugh. This is a hard one. It's frustrating when cats are slow to learn that biting is not acceptable.

As for the crating, an hour may seem excessive, but otherwise I don't think it's cruel (assuming you're not stuffing him into a fishbowl or something 

). Maybe 10-20 minutes? His experience with the spray bottle and your unfortunate lapse of judgment (we've all been there -- I've done it myself and hated myself after the fact) may be making him jumpier these days too. 

 

[pinkdagger]

Completely agree with MServant and tiring him out with tons of play. If you don't have a lot of time, get him running around for multiple short spurts.

I don't know how common this is, but my boyfriend did this with his past cat and we've found it effective for both of our cats (though biting hasn't been a huge issue, it works for other problem behaviour as well). We use a hissing sound when the cats are doing something bad... it's "cat languagey", so a hiss is inherently seen as a bad thing to them, and it's how other cats tell them whatever they're doing isn't okay and to stop or back off. We didn't have to train any association with that. If they're slowly approaching something bad, they get a sharp, but not very loud "sssssssssssss" sound, whereas if it's something sudden (hop on something they shouldn't, bite, scratching furniture, doing something very bad), they get a loud "SSSCCCSSSHHHH" (for lack of better um... onomatopoeia...). A few days ago, we saw one of the cats trying to bite lightly at one of our feet under the blankets. Each time she opened her mouth towards the foot, she'd get a soft hiss. When she still wasn't getting it and tried to go for more bites, we gently held the scruff of her neck while doing the soft hissing, and she didn't proceed anymore.

I personally don't think there's any need to frighten or punish cats, but I may have been fortunate with the cats I've encountered. I have a friend whose family took in a stray who was pregnant, and her kittens used to climb pant legs. As they got older and started going to their new homes, obviously that wasn't something that would be an attractive trait for a cat looking for a home (at least not when it gets older), if they started to paw or claw at our pant legs, we would just lift their claws out of our pants and turn them around. If they wanted to play, we would be at the ready with an appropriate toy, like a wand toy, which is distanced from human body parts.

 

[mservant]

I like what @pinkdagger  says about using sounds that might be natural for your cat to tune in to for communicating when you want a behaviour to stop.  Please be aware though that even light scruffing of a cat is painful for them and is experienced as aggressive by them.  Some other means of redirecting or removing them from what they are doing would be much less likely to set up an negative and fearful relationship between you and your cat while just as effective.  Infact remaining completely still usually does the trick, especially if you have bed covers or clothing for protection.

 

[sirius1]

Well, I wish I could report that this was resolved ... but a month on, he still seems to have learned nothing I am truly at my wits end with him. My legs are literally covered in scratch marks - it's gotten to the point where I am embarrassed to go to my gym pool because I suspect everyone there thinks I am a self-harmer. (This is not an exaggeration, I can post pictures of my totally screwed up legs - and it is everywhere from my feet to my upper thighs). 

Sometimes he can be so affectionate, but other days he is just a holy terror. I love how he's always sitting at the door waiting for me purring his head off, always comes the second I call his name and curls up in the evening to watch TV.  He has tons and tons of toys. I play with him daily. He has two cat trees and I clip his nails every week to minimise the damage. 

I have tried hissing at him. I've tried putting him to the side with a firm no. I've tried redirecting his attention with toys. I've tried squirting him. Now, I'm basically screaming at him whenever he bites/claws me. Sometimes he just goes completely manic, will claw his way up my leg just to grab my arm and start biting me obsessively. If I put him on the floor -he just does it all over again. After two months of this, I've just got no patience anymore with him. I'm starting to think he's is mentally retarded and incapable of learning. 

It would be one thing if it had gone from all the time to a lower frequency, but it seems no matter what I do - I'm still getting clawed up and bitten. I've tried to get my vet to do an early nueter to see if this helps, but she says the earliest she will do it is 5 months. 

If this does not start to improve soon, I may have to surrender him. I love him, but I cannot live my life covered in bleeding scratch marks - plus, I'm starting to worry about getting sick with all the information circulating about cat scratch fever. 

 

[mservant]

I am so sorry that things haven't improved for you both.  He sounds so lovely the rest of the time!  It is a shame your vet does not neuter any earlier, have they given reasons for this, esp when there are significant behaviour issues that are more difficult to retrain the longer they are present.  The International Cat Care site has some excellent information for vets and cat carers about the potential benefits and concerns about early neutering, and also on the changing practice being safe for the cat now they have greater awareness of the anesthetic issues for smaller kittens.  Mouse was neutered at about 10 weeks, at a mid point between his vaccinations, and that is quite a common practice for cat breeders to follow here in the UK as well as cat rescue organisations.

http://www.icatcare.org/

Please try to keep working with him; it sounds like you both have a lovely relationship when the biting and scratching are controlled.  I think it is rare for a cat not to be able to learn not to bite or scratch where they are otherwise socialized and bonding with a person.

 

[rachelinaz]

If you lived near me (AZ) we would take him. We have 4 kitten and a dog who thinks he is a kitten).

 

[plan]

I reserve the hiss for when my kitten bites wires, because that's the behavior that worries me most. If he bites me when playing, I discourage it obviously as I wrote in my last post, but it's generally no harm no foul. It doesnt hurt me much and it doesnt hurt him. But when he bites computer or power strip cables he has to know that's not acceptable. I've done everything I can to put most of them out of reach and make it inconvenient for him to get to them, and I'm gonna pick up some of that bitter apple stuff next time I go to the pet store. Bottom line, 

 
I am so sorry that things haven't improved for you both.  He sounds so lovley the rest of the time!  It is a shame your vet does not neuter any earlier, have they given reasons for this, esp when there are significant behaviour issues that are more difficult to retrain the longer they are present.  The International Cat Care site has some excellent information for vets and cat carers about the potential benefits and concerns about early neutering, and also on the changing practice being safe for the cat now they have greater awareness of the anesthetic issues for smaller kittens.  Mouse was neutered at about 10 weeks, at a mid point between his vaccinations, and that is quite a common practice for cat breeders to follow here in the UK as well as cat rescue organisations.

http://www.icatcare.org/

Please try to keep working with him; it sounds like you both have a lovely relationship when the biting and scratching are controlled.  I think it is rare for a cat not to be able to learn not to bite or scratch where they are otherwise socialized and bonding with a person.

Whoah, 10 weeks? I've run into the same issue as Sirus's mom, the vets here won't do it until 4-5 months.

How old is Sirius exactly? I wonder if maybe part of it is that he's in pain from teething?

 

[mservant]

I didn't ask earlier, but I am thinking you have talked to your vet about this behaviour continuing based on your comment about their not being happy to neuter before 5 months.  Did your vet have ideas about the behaviour, or make any suggestions.

I think @Plan's comment / question about teething is a good one as if your cat is around 4 months it is quite possible teeth are starting to cause some discomfort, plus chewing to relieve pain is a natural tendency just as it is with human children.  Kittens will often chew on anything they can.  That combined with boistrous behaviour which might settle with neutering is certainly a lot to handle.

Is there any patern with times of day, feeding times or what he has had to eat?  If he has been near any particular toy?  I know Mouse is always very over excited and will still wrap himself round my arm or leg, bite hard, and jump at my head if he has any contact with valarian. 

 

[sirius1]

Sirius is currently 15 1/2 weeks old. The vet has often commented that he's very rambunctious, but has not made any worthwhile suggestions on his behaviour. I give him meat chew sticks to give him something to gnaw for the teething. The behaviour doesn't seem to be linked to routine. If this vets office didn't provide such amazing deals on routine care - I would have swapped already.

She has criticised me a lot for the age at which I adopted him and has said that is probably the root of his issues (being adopted at 6-7 weeks) and seems not to believe me when I tell her that I was led to believe by the seller that he was 8 1/2 weeks when I adopted him, despite me telling her that I have not had kittens since I was a child - and did not recognise that he looked younger than 8 1/2 weeks because I simply don't see enough pets that age bracket. If I had known he was probably 6 weeks old when I collected him - I would not have taken him. The vet is very condescending, but unfortunately this vets office offers by far the cheapest vaccines etc. as it is a chain office with a preventative care plan that is paid in advance for £10 a month. I don't want to change offices as I'm now committed to paying this £10 a month for the vaccines, routine care, neutering etc. until April 2015. Overall, doing it this way will save me over £90 in costs on vet care - but it unfortunately means I'm kind of stuck with this vet until next year. 

 

[mservant]

How sad that a shelter did not either recognize or tell you your kitten's likely age when you adopted.  Sadly it is not uncommon for people to adopt at that age, or for people whose cats have had kittens decide to surrender their care when they are so small and not yet learned sufficient lessons from their mom or siblings.  A similar thing happened to a friend of mine not so long ago and their youngster had also not been socialized so they had a really difficult time initially.

15 1/2 weeks as young and your kitten is full of beans, likely to be starting to teeth, and wanting to practice all his natural instincts for hunting on anything and everything around him.  Other cats have fur to protect them in the play fighting and hunting practrice and as a human all you have is potential clothing or bedding, plus trying to develop sounds and signals that tell your little guy when he has over stepped the mark.  It is not something that happens over night, and I would say it took me until Mouse was about 3 months from when I adopted him (actually around the age your kitten is now) to control the most intense and deliberate of his biting adventures.  I was lucky though as he did only use his teeth - never claws.  He had zero fear though and routinely threw his whole body at my head not caring whether I was sitting or standing.  Launch at my bed from any high surface he could, and never tired of play.   Honestly, I do believe you can make a breakthrough with your kitten but it does take hard work, very consistent responses, and patience as endless as his energy.   It also needs you to relax and keep up a front of calm control.

When he is calm and being snuggly and then suddenly turns, or suddenly launches at you when you are doing something, can you see any slight change is his posture, facial expression, or small bocy movements that indicate he is about to attack?  If you can pick up on this it gives you a chance to make a move to get out of the way calmly and then calmly assert contorl telling him 'no',  divert so he gets a large toy instead of you, or to protect your self in some way so he lands on you but you do not get hurt and can stay motionless until he gives in and you again assert control and tell him no. 

 

[rachelinaz]

All of my cats we got under the age of 7 weeks. Not my choice... owners wanted to rid of them. My youngest was 3 weeks old.
No matter when you got him, I think he is lucky. What helped was having a buddy. Not sure if that is a possibility .

 

[sirius1]

Well, my vet refuses point blank to neuter him right now. For whatever reason, she believes that it affects their long term growth and health to do it so early. Since have paid a year in advance for this care plan, I really don't want to be going to another vet, especially as there is no guarantee that neutering early will fix the problem. 

The behaviour continues and if anything in the last few days it's been even worse. I'm starting to feel quite over it and angry that so many of my friends have lovely, sweet cats and I have this holy terror running around attacking me all the time. He's has more toys than any cat I know, he's on top quality food and still he insists on being an absolute jerk. It sounds horrible, but it's gotten so bad that recently I'm tempted to just lock him in the kitchen and pop in to check in/feed him but otherwise leave him to his own devices. None of the aforementioned suggestions have worked at all. 

 

[mservant]

It is so sad when he sounds so cute at other times.

I know you have said you take him off you when he bites or scratches, and put him on the floor but he comes back and does the same thing again.  Have you also tried 'time out'?

Do your yell / ouch, detach him from biting and or scratching, and then either you or he goes on the other side of a closed door for about 3 minutes and you remain quiet.  Check on him after about 3 minutes and if he is calm you can try sharing space again but if he comes back to attack you repeat the time out.  You keep repeating it until he gets that when he attacks you leave him on his own to calm down.  I wouldn't suggest longer than 10 minutes between checking if 3 is not enough as the cat will loose any association between the separation and the behaviour.

Is it about 4 weeks before your vet will book in the surgery now?

 

[mrsfpmister]

Just a warning that isolating can make this worse.
I know you play with him a lot, but try to keep a very steady routine and INTENSE play schedule. Also, strategizing play/feed times can be a lifesaver.
Maybe he's just exploring the world and since your the only living, he's harassing you