Oreo still wants to play with hands

[Yania]

Oreo is so eager to play with our hands. She is 6 months now. Although she is very playful, we have tried to play with her with many toys and she gets bored very easily with them but sometimes when she looks "relaxed" and you try to pet her or give her some scratchies she flops down on her belly and tries to play with our hands. I haven't been able to give her as much affection anymore because 1. I don't want my hands to be bitten and 2. I never wanted to show her that my hands are toys. This is a problem for me because even yesterday when I was giving her some affection she wanted to play with my curly hair. It's like I can never have an affectionate moment with her without her wanting to play with some part of my body. She also got spayed recently but she is back to her shenanigans such as scratching the sofa when she has like 10 varied scratching posts (vertical and horizontal), hissing at us, biting family and house guests, and trying to play with our hands. She's always trying to play with our hands and because of that, I don't really trust her as much or want to be around her but I would if she could just relax around us and stop biting our hands or playing with them.

Any more tips on how to stop playful cats from playing with hands?

 

[Yania]

Oh, and she also used to come to me on my lap, and then I would give her some pets and then go back to doing what I was doing, and then for some reason, she would bite my arm on multiple occasions. She also just bit one of my family members downstairs and the fact that I can't do anything about protecting my family members from her makes me annoyed. My mom doesn't want to listen to me when I tell her and them to just ignore her because all Oreo wants to do is bite people and then when someone gets bitten it's their fault for not listening.

 

[CarmiesMom]

well you could try replaceing your hand with a catnip toy & telling her no firmly, and one i have used the SBOP (Squirt Bottle Of Power) one or two squirts and then usually all i have to do is show it to my kitties and they know they are doing something naughty and if they keep it up they will get squirted, but above all talk to your vet shes very young still a kitten but the vet might have more advice for you , the only other thing i can think that might help are a calming collar and Feliway diffusers or Natures Miracle calming spray all found on Amazon, but talk to the vet to rule out Medical reasons for agression, years ago one of my cats would hide under the dining room table cloth a that age to attack our feet, thankfully he grew out of it fairly quickly.

 

[ArtNJ]

Kittens are the cutest, sometimes the sweetest . . . and quite often, a royal PITA! How are you trying to train her? Just ignoring her when she bites sounds like?

I'd suggest a loud "no!" and disengaging/ignoring the cat. Alternatively, you could try holding the cat in place relatively firmly with the idea this will make it not fun.

Try to pay attention to when the kitten is willing to be petted. Might only be when sleepy or when in a particular spot where the kitten chills. Its like if you try to hug a 5 yo human at the wrong time, you are going to get pushback. You might also be able to improve your petting technique. Avoid going directly at the head, and focus on behind the ears, neck, cheeks and avoid the bottom half of the body, tail and belly like the plague -- those areas trigger a lot of cats, especially young ones. If its not a long hair cat, don't brush the cat. Will get better with time.