Mary Allen
No matter how softly it purrs and how delightfully cute it may be – a cat is and will always be a predator. This becomes particularly clear when house tigers bite. To avoid serious injuries, you should wean your velvet paw off this behavior as quickly as possible.
With a very small cat, it may still be cute when it suddenly bites your hand with its delicate baby teeth. Nevertheless, you should break this behavior from your kitty as early as possible – because as she gets older, the bites can be quite painful. Because if a human is bitten by a cat, it can have serious consequences. So start training as early as possible. For small kittens, simply pulling your hand away will suffice if they start nibbling on you while playing. For older cats, there are a few other things you should do as well.
Never Bite Again: Consistency is the Magic Word
Cats are known to be afraid of water – take advantage of this if you want to break the habit of biting your cat. Each time the velvet paw sinks its teeth into your skin, spray it with some water, such as a commercially available water gun and spray bottle. This educational measure requires a lot of perseverance on your part – the animal only gets used to biting if it associates this unpleasant experience with it every time. At the same time, however, never be resentful if you want to break your cat’s habit: if your cat needs to be cuddled immediately afterward, you shouldn’t deny him a few strokes.
Offer the Cat Alternatives
In the rarest of cases, your cat will bite you out of real aggression or even spite. Often this happens more because she wants to live out her play instinct. You can see this intention quite clearly in young animals in particular: the kitty lays back its ears, its eyes are wide open and it attacks quickly and precisely. It can also happen that a cat suddenly uses its teeth when playing with humans. If your velvet paw does this and bites your hand, for example, do not pull it away immediately – this will only give you additional scratches. Instead, keep your hand completely relaxed. The cat will then consider its “prey” “dead” and will most likely let it go, allowing you to gently pull it back.
In any case, you should distract your cat and provide alternatives so that such painful situations do not arise in the first place. Offer her cat toy to bite to her heart’s content. Because if your kitty has interesting alternatives, she has no reason to mistreat her master and mistress for her prey-catching games – and you don’t have to break her habit of this behavior.