Hi all,
I'm struggling with some of my cat's behaviour at the moment - over the last few months she's decided that its a great game to really attack my arms, biting and scratching to draw blood, and I'm sort of reaching my whit's end with it and hoped that people here might have a few tips and tricks!
Some background - I adopted sky at 16 weeks old from a family that couldn't cope with their 4 kids under 5, a dog and a kitten since the dog had started being very aggressive towards the kitten. This was 6 months ago and so she's 10 months old now, I got her spayed at 5 months old and she is a solely indoor cat. After a rocky start (I think both of us were very stressed for the first couple of months) we've settled into a routine and I am so glad I stuck it out, I love her to pieces!
At the beginning she didn't really pay much attention to my hands and arms as toys - and I've made sure she has a wide variety of things to play with that put on rotation so she doesn't get bored and have at least 3 interactive play sessions with her each day. But in the last 3 months or so this has changed. (seemingly) Unprovoked she will pounce on my arms, clamping down with teeth and claws - drawing blood. When this first started happening I did a bunch of research (well... googling) and came across suggestions such as making high pitched noises when they attack to mimic their siblings, hiss at them e.t.c. I tried these (although I stopped short of spraying her with water in the face) but they didn't seem to work so I started to just move her off me when it happened, put her on the floor and move away e.t.c, but she seemed to take this as a challenge and it only worked to provoke her further and she would continue to essentially hunt/pounce on me.
I next tried just ignoring her, so when she was clamped onto my arm I would just not react or move. Often she would bite down (hard) quite some times, move away and return to nip a few more times before moving on. One month on from adopting this strategy and nothing else has changed. Almost every day at least one of these attacks happens and I can't link it to anything in particular. Its not worse when I get home from a full day at work vs a weekend when I'm home all day. It doesn't seem to matter whether shes had 2 full hours of interactive play with me or 15 minutes.
Since she's only 10 months old she is still a kitten so I'm hoping she'll grow out of it over the next year r but if anyone has any tips or tricks I could try to save my arms in the meantime I'd be super grateful!
Thanks in advance,
J
I'm struggling with some of my cat's behaviour at the moment - over the last few months she's decided that its a great game to really attack my arms, biting and scratching to draw blood, and I'm sort of reaching my whit's end with it and hoped that people here might have a few tips and tricks!
Some background - I adopted sky at 16 weeks old from a family that couldn't cope with their 4 kids under 5, a dog and a kitten since the dog had started being very aggressive towards the kitten. This was 6 months ago and so she's 10 months old now, I got her spayed at 5 months old and she is a solely indoor cat. After a rocky start (I think both of us were very stressed for the first couple of months) we've settled into a routine and I am so glad I stuck it out, I love her to pieces!
At the beginning she didn't really pay much attention to my hands and arms as toys - and I've made sure she has a wide variety of things to play with that put on rotation so she doesn't get bored and have at least 3 interactive play sessions with her each day. But in the last 3 months or so this has changed. (seemingly) Unprovoked she will pounce on my arms, clamping down with teeth and claws - drawing blood. When this first started happening I did a bunch of research (well... googling) and came across suggestions such as making high pitched noises when they attack to mimic their siblings, hiss at them e.t.c. I tried these (although I stopped short of spraying her with water in the face) but they didn't seem to work so I started to just move her off me when it happened, put her on the floor and move away e.t.c, but she seemed to take this as a challenge and it only worked to provoke her further and she would continue to essentially hunt/pounce on me.
I next tried just ignoring her, so when she was clamped onto my arm I would just not react or move. Often she would bite down (hard) quite some times, move away and return to nip a few more times before moving on. One month on from adopting this strategy and nothing else has changed. Almost every day at least one of these attacks happens and I can't link it to anything in particular. Its not worse when I get home from a full day at work vs a weekend when I'm home all day. It doesn't seem to matter whether shes had 2 full hours of interactive play with me or 15 minutes.
Since she's only 10 months old she is still a kitten so I'm hoping she'll grow out of it over the next year r but if anyone has any tips or tricks I could try to save my arms in the meantime I'd be super grateful!
Thanks in advance,
J
