Raising Non-Aggressive Cats

August 15, 2008

Raising Non-Aggressive Cats by Kari Breed

If kittens, puppies and children weren’t so cute, surely their populations would be diminished by us strangling them, perhaps, even, putting them – and us – into extinction. Kittens, especially, are adorable, cute, fuzzy little psychopathic killers leaping at anything that wiggles – or doesn’t. They are either asleep or attacking something. There isn’t much in-between, except an occasional poop and dinner.

Their teeth and nails are sharp, razor sharp. Sharp like razors. Sharp, sharp razors.

Literally, a kitten passes from crack-brained toddler to hormonal teenager in a matter of six months. Thirty minutes ago, mine blitzkrieged my desk, ripping apart Kleenex, sticky notes and the phone book. Now he’s sleeping like an angel on my lap. Awwww! He’s so adorable… when he’s sleeping.

Because of their tiny, little size, it’s very easy for us gigantic humans to forget that kittens are in intensive training to become great murderers. Every single antic they perform, from pouncing to hiding and leaping is deep training to grow up capable of feeding themselves and their young. Let’s just hope it isn’t you they’re after. And it could be, if you’re not careful.

The mistake people often make is playing too rough with their kitten. They over-aggravate, turning their kitten mean and aggressive… all by complete accident.

It’s very cute to see a kitten get riled up when we play with them. They attack, bite and maybe even growl. How adorable. This little creature sure gets worked up! But, what we’re not realizing is that this kind of play may be fun for us, but it is not fun for them. Once an animal passes from playing into irritability and aggravation, that animal is not having fun. It is, in fact being taught to fight. It is being taught to attack, to be aggressive. And when that animal gains another ten pounds, and has bigger teeth and nails, and stronger jaws, it’s not going to be so cute when it attacks. In fact, a cat can really tear a person up.

A friend of mine had a cat that her boyfriend completely ruined by this kind of play. No one knew any better – except the cat, of course. When it passed from fuzzy little creature to full-grown creature, its favorite mode of expression was leap, bite and rip; your feet; your head; your everything. And my friend and her boyfriend had no idea why. They thought the cat was just bad. But it wasn’t. It was trained to do exactly as it was doing. Their solution was to dump it off somewhere. What could have been a good life for a loving pet became a great loss, all because of ignorance.

The rule in my house has always been: Do not use your hands to play with kittens until they are calm enough to play nicely. You can use toys, but no roughhousing with your hands.

This is easier said than done. You cannot always keep your hands away from the kitten, and because they are in constant attack mode, you are bound to be caught up in their play. But when handling them and loving on them turns into biting and scratching, there are things you can do to discourage this behavior.

You might think that smacking your kitten is a good idea, teaching them that what they are doing is wrong, but you’d actually be teaching them aggression through your aggression. Cats do not learn the way people do. Punishment of this kind is a teaching tool for them to fight back. There is, actually, only one thing you can do: Remove your hands from the situation.

When the kitten begins biting and scratching, try to take your hand slowly away. Slowly, because a cat’s nails are shaped like hooks. When their prey (you, in this case) pulls away, it hurts more because it is pulling against the hook-end of the nail. This causes the prey to stop pulling, where it can then be devoured. Goodbye mouse, hello tummy. If you yank your hand away too fast, you’re likely to get very scratched.

Instead of getting away as quickly as possible, unhook the diabolical beast with your other hand. No doubt, this will cause le kitten to then attack that hand, but, because you are at the ready, you will eventually get away. At this point, there are several things you can do: hide your hands so the beast has nothing to attack; distract the murderous creature with a toy; or ball your hand into a not-so-easy-to-bite fist. Sometimes blowing in their face or a sharp, “No!” is a good distracter. If the kitten isn’t biting or scratching in earnest and isn’t hurting you too much, you can rest your hand there. At this point, le kitten will either play non-aggressively, which is fine; will turn aggressive, which means you have to remove your hand; or will revert to The Lick of Doom!!! Of course, The Lick of Doom!!! is a loving gesture, just don’t tell the cat that you know this. You’ll ruin its rep.

I’ve had my new kitten exactly a month today. The first two weeks I spent employing the above techniques, and after that, he plays with my hands gently. Enough so that I can even do a little finger-wiggling without worrying about its amputation.

Once a week, I trim the very tiniest tips of his nails, just enough to remove the razor-sharpness but still allowing him to use them to climb up on things like the sofa and bed (and, unfortunately, my pants). Just remember, when trimming cat nails, be absolutely certain that at the moment of snipping, the cat isn’t wiggling around or trying to break free. You could end up cutting off more than you can chew – or stop bleeding. Keep styptic powder on-hand. It is very dangerous to allow cat nails to bleed. They don’t clot well.

I use toenail clippers for my cats. Holding the cat on my lap, I gently squeeze the “finger” to pop the nail out. Then, with the clippers, I gently grab the end of the nail where I want to cut, and before cutting, I make sure the cat is being still. If the cat wiggles before I can trim the nail, I abort the process and then start over again, gently holding the nail tip with the clippers before cutting. Normally you can see the cat’s veins inside the nail and can tell how far down not to cut. But if you can’t, err on the side of caution and just trim the very tips. Trimming once a week saves our new sofa from becoming a scratching post. Cats don’t actually sharpen their nails by scratching. From my observations, I would say that they are trying to dull them down a bit, trying to remove the shedding part or are pulling on them because it feels good. All I know is that as long as I remember to trim our cats’ nails regularly, they don’t have the urge to scratch. Every bit of damage done to our furniture was due to my own failure to keep them trimmed.

Most of our cats (six now) are used to the process of trim-time and will sit through it calmly enough. If the kitten is too hyper, I will wait until he’s asleep, then bug him. Another of our cats had a bad experience getting a vaccine shot and, unless he is sleepy or in the mood, will struggle till the death if I pick him up. Again, I accost him at nap-time when he is mellow and tolerant.

Thus far, I have had the joyous and insane experience of raising six kittens, and all of them are non-aggressive, loving pets. I imagine they think they same of me.

Life Lesson: The attacker often becomes the attackee.

Posted in Cats