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Help fixing jerk cat. Cat problems off the chart.
Ravenhpltc24
So RavenRegistered User regular
So RavenRegistered User regular
Got a kitty! He is adorable and very friendly some of the time. Most of the time he is a colossal prick. Is there any way to fix him so he stops being a colossal prick? DRX is calling him a "reclamation project" but he is too cute and friendly to throw in the trash. Lookit this guy;
So he is very cuddly and loves being around people all the time, will curl up on people and go to sleep, seems happy most of the time. Hooray. Put that in the + column. Here are the minuses;
So the current discipline he's been getting is time outs. Any time he bites or does any of the above, he gets picked up and put in the bathroom, locked in for about 20 minutes. This seems to have no effect, as he doesn't seem all that bothered by it. Spray bottle of water also has no effect, neither does shouting at him or clapping. DRX has got angry and picked him up by the scruff a few times, and even that doesn't seem to disable him or have any real effect...
And this isn't like one off bad behaviour per day, he seems to go from one thing to another constantly, and we end up yelling at him or locking him in time out multiple times per hour.
Any advice? :<
So he is very cuddly and loves being around people all the time, will curl up on people and go to sleep, seems happy most of the time. Hooray. Put that in the + column. Here are the minuses;
Think that's it. It's like a comprehensive list of all possible cat problems, and he has all of em!- he will bite people unprovoked. No going near his belly, no other warning signs like flattened ears or wagging tail, just out of nowhere, chomp. Once he's decided to bite, he won't stop, will dig claws in and just go to town on you. He keeps purring while doing it, so it seems like it's playful. He'll also attack feet when you're walking down stairs, and I have nearly tripped over him doing this several times. This is probably the worst behavior, and the one I wanna fix the most. Unfortunately it happens pretty frequently.
- goes inside couch and shreds it from within. Only way to get him out is to shake treats. Have sprayed some of that anti-cat juice in there, and bought him a new scratching post. This is tentatively solved, as he hasn't gone in there today...
- chews on power cables, plastic like DRX's precious gunpla and lego.
- tries to eat our food, drink from anything we have laying around. We end up having to lock him in the bathroom while we're eating.
- won't bury his poop in the litter box. This is pretty minor and doesn't really bother us, but maybe it's related.
So the current discipline he's been getting is time outs. Any time he bites or does any of the above, he gets picked up and put in the bathroom, locked in for about 20 minutes. This seems to have no effect, as he doesn't seem all that bothered by it. Spray bottle of water also has no effect, neither does shouting at him or clapping. DRX has got angry and picked him up by the scruff a few times, and even that doesn't seem to disable him or have any real effect...
And this isn't like one off bad behaviour per day, he seems to go from one thing to another constantly, and we end up yelling at him or locking him in time out multiple times per hour.
Any advice? :<
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A lot of that behavior will mellow with age as well; it's very "terrible twos" behavior for kittens. But, TL;DR, he needs discipline.
Get him a few more scratching posts as well if he's really destructive.
My Backloggery
My cat is a bit older, so his energy levels are lower, but he did have a little bout of biting and attacking my feet. It was only at night when I was pacing the apartment getting ready for bed and shutting things down. I started to carry the bird toy with me, just letting it trail behind me, and it was too interesting and noisy for him to not go for that instead of me. A week of that plus a few good hisses if he went for me instead, and he doesn't do it anymore, even when I'm not carrying something around.
Yelling does nothing for my cat, its a human sound he gives no fucks about. Hissing is more specifically the "cat no" and he pays attention. Either through the teeth or the back of the throat. The water bottle was great for making him stop beating at the bed room door, but ultimately he knows its only going to get him wet if we are holding it, and I didn't want to be carrying around a spray bottle all the damn time. So, I hiss and disengage. If he bites me he gets pushed off the couch. Now he basically will mime the action if hes tired of something but he wont actually make contact. Like we've mutually agreed on a warning system.
If your cat is super food focused though, some of our solutions might work for you. We have a puzzle bottle that basically always has dry food in it. Our cats a little on the tubbier side now, but the bottle is his go to for a little stimulation and a snack, and he gets meals that are wet food. The bottle only has a hole big enough to release one kernel at a time (get a nice food, with uniform kernels, we get Blue wilderness stuff).
We've also clicker trained him to sit and shut the fuck up for food. That took a bit more time, but hes learned he has to do some shit and cant just jump all over us and cry to get food, which seriously reduced begging behaviors. Cats do respond to training, they are just way less eager to please you than dogs, so it requires some patience and bargaining
Isolating him never really helped much, personally. Hes on his best behavior when hes super distracted. If you have a window you can put a bird feeder close to, something like that would probably help. I made a makeshift kitty door for the balcony and now specter can sit outside for the majority of the day and cackle at the birds. Now that hes up all day, hes too tired to give a shit about my feet at night.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
- Lots of attention and playing when they are good; stop it when they misbehave
- Citrus spray for power cords - make the cords taste yucky for kitties
- Isolation in the bathroom anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 days (for serious offenses)
- Rewards (treats and attention) for scratching their scratching posts
- Sticky tape in areas we don't want them to go or scratch (maybe good for your couch)
- Keeping the house orderly; same time for dinner, litter box cleaning and no clothes or food left out (strange how this sets expectations with cats)
So uh... hiss at your cat?
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
It does but you have to do it consistently and for a good long time. It's worked for two of my past cats.
Psychologically, isolation doesn't trigger for cats. They don't know why they are locked up, only that they are locked up and don't like it. Their brains aren't wired to understand the causation on that level. Part of why spraybottles generally work well are due to the immediate cause-effect trigger. Do this, that happens. Isolation just triggers unhappiness over time and (usually) just associates it with the human putting them up or being carried to that location, rather than the action you are punishing.
I'd highly recommend a little training. Training your cat to sit is like trying to charm a snake, but when you both get the hang of it, training is fun attention time! You get to play and reinforce habits you want, like "Sit down" and "Jesus, shut up". Also fun things like "Jump here!" and "Hang out on your tree!". Isolation still gives them the first thing they want initially. You have to pick them up and pay attention to them and wrestle them somewhere, even if the end result is bad. I read that the best thing is to ignore them isolate yourself. When my cat scratched me too hard one day, I yelped, hissed at him loud as heck, and went to the bathroom and immediately hung out in there, took a shower and such with him closed out. It was 100% what he didn't want, which is me ignoring him. He's never quite done that again, it got the message across.
Oh, with the litter. How big is your box? it might be too small.
Fair warning though, it doesn't mean you should play with him using your hands or feet as cats will learn where their weapons are, and you'll end out with increased biting if you force it. Kittens also teethe and as long as you train him not to attack appendages, you'll be fine eventually.
...there's nothing you can do about him attacking feet under a blanket while you sleep. I do not know why, cat's are just jerks in some ways.
Edit: The only time isolation has been useful for me was when the cats play a little too rough or when one was first introduced to the other after I got him from a shelter. Give them space to claim as their own and let them chill out. It's not really a worthwhile punishment or threat. One of my cats actually goes into the carrier if I put it down because he likes it.
how old is he? because most kittens are kind of dicks until they grow up and shed some kitten energy
Feet monsters are ancient enemies of cats. It all stems back to the history of small dogs being used as bed warmers. Cats, which were rarely able to strike their more popular dog enemies, had to wait for night time to strike their returning salvos. While the ancient Dog Cat wars of old have become the more muted Cold(snout) Wars of today, cats continuously practice their night assault drills of blanket strikes, batting grenades off of cliffs onto dogs heads (via batting anything off of anything), and their surprise, final anti-captivity belly rubs to death by claws attack for when the inevitable time for Dog Cat war 2 comes once again.
Your cat is adorable by the way
This. Also teeth brushing (whaaaaaat brush my cats teeth you crazy?) No. I am not crazy. Only as a kitten or young cat can you get them set on this and brushing their teeth every so often (usually once a week) is a really good way to prevent a lot of health problems, from urinary track to gum infections, that plague cats as they get older. You'll still want a professional cleaning during your annual checkup, but its a good way to ensure there isn't serious problems going on.
The cats get fed dry food twice a day. Once in the morning and once in the evening. We can't just leave food bowls out because one of them is too fat, and has to eat special diet food so she can clean her own butthole. If we leave food out, she just eats it instead of her own food. Anyway, what I'm looking for is some way to get her to chill the fuck out and not come up to my room at 4 in the morning and bang on the door like she's the police. Drowning her in the toilet was my first idea this morning, but that's not a very good idea I don't think... I don't want to put a baby gate to block the stairs because that would look tacky, and she would just jump over it. A shock collar thing would be fun for like... one time, but then I would feel bad for hurting her. I used to have a taboo buzzer thing that emitted a high-pitched noise that would shut her up for a while, but she's used to it now. I could hold the button down all day and she would just stare at me.
Can you put the fatty in a different room at night? I doubt any cat would accept that but had to ask. A friend of mine separates her cats' food by putting them in different rooms and heights. Fat cats cant jump.
Edit: The fat one isn't the asshole cat. She's fine to eat whenever. It's a different slim cat who's like "FUCKING FEED ME NOW GODDAMMIT!"
Same as with anything, consistency. Every time she wakes you up meowing go over and spray her with a squirt bottle, then go back to sleep (even if you were getting up at that bit, go back to bed for a few minutes to make the point). Be consistent, and eventually cat will understand that howling doesn't lead to food.
That said, some cats are just very vocal. They learn that from humans, and they learn that meowing gets attention so they do it a bunch to express a wide range of emotions. My maine coon will howl to no end if my Wife and I aren't in the same room. No real clue why (could be a 'herding' mentality that Maine coons can have from bred behaviors, or it could be an abandonment thing. Maybe he just likes to play marriage counselor!), but if he doesn't see us together in the same room he gets really upset. We don't punish that behavior since it seems to be rooted in concern rather than frustration.
He also used to meow at 5 am to wake me up for food. I trained him over time to not howl, but instead to pop my nose as I slept to wake me up but not my wife. I normally wake up at that time so it's cool. When he started poping me (after getting squirted for a few weeks when hollering), I decided to reward that behavior by immediately getting up and feeding him. Now he is my alarm clock, at 5 am each day (+1 or - 15 minutes) i get a "boop" on the head a few times and its time to wake up and feed the cats/go running/make coffee.
As others have said, part of it is just an age thing. Give him plenty of toys and scratching posts/forts to play in, encourage him to use them. Really helps.
I honestly feel that when I named him Adam West, I invoked some unknown magic that infused his soul with the personality of the Family Guy incarnation of the man.
That said, he's my little buddy.
Tie a dishtowel or something to the doorknob on the outside when you go to bed. When she cries outside your door, do not respond. Wear earplugs if you have to. Even if you can't sleep, do not open the door. When it's time to get up, go take the towel off the doorknob, close the door, and wait. The next time she cries, go feed her. Do this consistently, and she'll eventually figure out that you only respond to crying if the dishtowel is not on the door.
(This example is from Don't Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor. It worked with a small barking dog - the only hitch was that the dog eventually figured out how to tug the towel off the doorknob, so make sure it's firmly tied on
edit: Also, the behavior may get worse just before it gets better, so stick with it!
Wander does the same thing; in the morning, if she's shut out of my room, she'll meow and meow and meow, and if I go feed her and then take a shower, she gets super upset, but the most upset is when I've gotten up to feed her, gone into the shower, and my roommate is still in her room. The cat will freak. Out.
And if we're in separate rooms (I'm in the living room, she's in her bedroom) the cat will pick a spot equidistant so that she has line of site on us both.
It's startling, annoying, and adorable.
My roommate is housesitting for her dad this weekend and Wander spent the entire night in my room without having to be kicked out (she will knock a lamp over onto my head if she wants me to wake up) which was an odd change. I think it might be because the roommate door was open, even if she wasn't there.
And a lot of the time the cat is in my room, she won't sleep on my bed. She'll rotate my computer chair so it's facing my bed and then sleep on that.
And a lot of the time when we're playing fetch, she'll chase the toy, bring it into my room, (????) and bring it out like four minutes later. Maybe I just have more floor space in there for her to bat it around, I dunno.
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So typical :biggrin:
This is what I wake up to every morning:
Certain cat breeds do the paw drinking due to breeding. Most water-breed cats (ones bred for mousing around docks and on ships) will do the paw drinking while most others will use their tounge as a spoon.
Then you have special needs cats, like my little guy, who has so little coordination that he just sticks his face in the bowl and just chomps it life food.
That said, all cats have their own personalities and quirks, so some trial and error will probably be needed. Just be careful that you're not accidentally rewarding him with your punishments (e.g. with attention, or something that he views as a fun game), or else he'll become even more of an asshole.
Do you live in my house?? This sounds like our cats, except one of ours leaves his octopus toy in the water dish (I guess he's trying to return it to its natural environment??) and our oldest cat does the paw dunking thing, to the point that sometimes he refuses to drink water out of anything except a tall cup so he can dunk his paw in it. He will sit next to a water bowl that is full of totally clean and fresh water and cry and cry and cry until we fill a cup up for him to drink out of.
Because I see "Help jerking fixed cat" every time
For the rest of her life that stomp was all I needed to get her to stop doing whatever because uh-oh the feet are angry.
oh~ Almost certainly actually, and having a tomcat later on can be a bit of a pain in the ass, especially when he gets old enough to start spraying
We picked up a feral kitty and he was a horrible violent tornado of claws and broken crockery at about 6mos - some carefully consistent reinforcement of positive behaviour and getting him fixed turned out to be the solution
Now he's a cuddlebug most of the time (he's almost 3 I think) and the rest of the time, well, he mostly exercises his mischievous qualities by bullying the St Bernard
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