How to stop a kitten from nipping toes, all of the time?
July 15, 2020 4:04 PM   Subscribe

Hello! Toby Macaroni joined 4-person household in October. He is currently 9 months old and we love him a lot, play with him a lot (cardboard wire apparatus, strings, etc.), and stimulate his mind. He continually nips at our feet -- and it hurts! What are gentle ways that we can redirect his behavior? Saying shhh really loudly and NO isn't working.
posted by melodykramer to Pets & Animals (18 answers total)
 
Sometimes it can help to really ham up your hurt response. “Oooowwweee! That hurt me!” You can also cringe, make sad faces, walk away etc. The idea is to leverage your natural instincts for nonverbal communication and hope/assume they don’t actually want to be hurting you. I’ve seen this work on many species of pet and also children, YMMV.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:08 PM on July 15, 2020 [11 favorites]


Have you ever heard a puppy whine in high pitched short little bursts? I have had great success with decreasing nibbling by mimicking that sound. I'm trying to figure out if I can actually upload a little audio clip of what I do. I kind of got, "Ow ow ow," softly while gently detaching the nibbler from my toes. It has worked with every one of my cats.

cat tax please?
posted by Kitchen Witch at 4:19 PM on July 15, 2020 [7 favorites]


Response by poster: This is Toby
posted by melodykramer at 4:50 PM on July 15, 2020 [19 favorites]


Squirt gun.
posted by Freedomboy at 4:51 PM on July 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


Cats hate: water pisols, containers of coins, and loud hand claps much more than shushing I find.
posted by smoke at 5:23 PM on July 15, 2020


Have you tried specific chewing toys? There are some for cats, and when my kittens were around the same age, getting them some chew toys seemed to result in them chewing on me much less.
posted by ktkt at 5:28 PM on July 15, 2020


Try a making a huge, loud, dramatic HHHIIIISSSSS noise!

Only technique that ever worked on my cats for anything
posted by jgirl at 5:31 PM on July 15, 2020 [3 favorites]


I was going to suggest hissing like a cat too. Helps if you get your face near theirs and make a cat hiss (as distinct from what we'd think of as a snake hiss). Whenever I did that with my kittens, they’d suddenly stop what they were doing and start licking their paws or something, as though that’s what they’d meant to do all along.
posted by holborne at 5:44 PM on July 15, 2020


Toby is adorable
posted by biggreenplant at 6:05 PM on July 15, 2020 [4 favorites]


I found with cats, dogs and small children, the key is to give them an alternative. Just saying "no", hissing, making injury sounds, etc. does not give them an alternative. Some sort of chew toy or piece of leather to chew on worked for me. With my kids, you can't draw on the wall, but you can draw on this paper to make a pretty picture. With my dogs, you cannot nip at me, but you can chew this old shoe anytime, anywhere. Cats of course seem to be resistant to reason, but if they are given an alternative activity they can be distracted.
posted by AugustWest at 6:19 PM on July 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


When mother cats are disciplining their kittens they growl.
I have found that a growl gets a cats attention and understanding much more effectively than hissing or scolding.
Try growling a little. And maybe a gentle scruffing to move the kitty away from your toes.
posted by SLC Mom at 7:29 PM on July 15, 2020


I have a tuxedo cat too, who also displayed nippy behaviour when he was about the same age (see https://ask.metafilter.com/320595/How-to-curb-aggression-in-10-month-old-neutered-male-cat).

The only thing that ever worked with my kitteh, Junipurr, at that age was a novel sound. Hissing or yelping or whatever would work once or twice, maybe three times. Then he got used to it and it didn't phase him. Having a ready supply of new weird noises may distract your cat long enough for you and your toes to make a getaway.

I also tried the vaunted spray bottle, citrus essence, etc. Junipurr would let me know with his body language that he didn't like said items, but that wouldn't actually dissuade him from doing the naughty thing in question. He would, for example, give me a dirty look when he was on my nightstand and I sprayed him. Then he'd just resume knocking items off onto the floor. While being sprayed.

Junipurr stopped doing this kind of thing eventually, when he kittened himself out. The sad thing is, although he isn't as pesky at age 3, he also isn't as playful and energetic. I kinda miss the kitten version of him sometimes. Enjoy it while you have it!
posted by nirblegee at 7:47 PM on July 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


I got a stuffed animal dog toy that I would shove in my cat’s face and make him attack that instead of me. Once he ripped a hole in it I stuffed catnip in the hole, even. It didn’t entirely work but it helped to get us through that phase.

(I tried the spray bottle until like the third time when he would jump and run away, look at me, then run right back, making it a game! His favorite game is still me chasing him around the house; he gets all arched-back and hides but then comes right back at me. If he were a person, he’d love scary movies, I think.)
posted by jeweled accumulation at 8:40 PM on July 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


Bitter spray on your toes.
posted by zamboni at 9:02 PM on July 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


If he's an only child, and he's been pouncing on your feet as you walk around the house, maybe it's because he's got no one to wrestle with. Cats & kittens mock-attack and wrestle with each other as play. If you find him going for your ankles while you do the crossword, perhaps pause for a few moments and give him a few rounds of Toby vs. The Giant Hand From Above, flipping him over and around and doing paws vs fingers. Or maybe a him-sized stuffed animal that he can practice his tackle moves on.

Also, to the extent I speak cat, a hiss, Bride of Frankenstein style, means Whoa! Back the FUCK off! I save that for actual biting or scratching, and it quickly reinforces body boundaries.
posted by bartleby at 9:14 PM on July 15, 2020


Ours (who was maybe 3-6 months older than yours but otherwise similar-sounding) did this for a couple weeks after we brought him home from the shelter. We used nonverbal communication and hisses and the toe-hunting stopped pretty quick, and best of all, now we can still play semi-rough, even wrestle, and he knows the limits: even with all his claws and a pronounced hunting instinct, he never injures me.

I'm of the opinion that the spray bottle is too harshly punitive, and also that negative reinforcement with cats simply doesn't work; they're too egotistical ;) to make the connection between "thing I did" + "unrelated bad thing afterward" = "I did a bad thing."
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 5:24 AM on July 16, 2020


This is your friendly psych degree holder reminding everyone that the "negative"part of the phrase "negative reinforcement" doesn't mean bad, it means removing a stimulus. "Reinforcement" means encouraging a behavior to continue or increase. Spraying a cat when s/he displays behavior you don't like is not negative reinforcement, it's punishment (that is, introducing an undesirable stimulus in order to decrease or stop the behavior).

Also, animals don't need to hold a conception like "the thing I did was bad" in order to respond to Skinnerian conditioning. When done successfully, it creates a reflexive response, requiring no thought on the part of the subject. Even mice and rats respond.
posted by nirblegee at 7:38 AM on July 16, 2020 [2 favorites]


Kittens learn socialization from other kittens. When they play too rough, they hear a high-pitched squeak - be assertive with this - and the other kitten stops playing.

I have experienced this working. Don't scare your kitten with a loud low human noise, but make an immediate, loud, very high squeak and go limp. Stop playing, ignore the kitten for a few minutes. Then start playing, gently.

Also - don't use your own hand as a cat toy. I've seen a lot of people playing with kittens just use their wiggling fingers as a fun toy for the kitten. This sends the wrong message. Body parts are not toys for cats :)
posted by amtho at 1:25 PM on July 16, 2020


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