Is your little tiger driving you up the wall with one of the following cat problems?
Biting And Scratching You
Cats naturally have a lot of energy. If you keep kitty indoors, he may not be getting enough stimulation and may be overly enthusiastic when playing with you. It is best if you can schedule some regular playtimes with your cat to bleed off some of this excess energy. Often, you will find that he will stop biting and scratching you too hard all on his own.
You probably don't want to bleed while waiting for kitty to calm down. Instead of rough-housing with him, play with him using some kitty toys instead. Try a squeeking rubber mouse, or a ball. You can also dangle something on a toy fishing pole for him to chase.
Don't punish your cat if he plays too rough. Just immediately stop playing with him and don't pay any more attention to him until he calms down. If he chases after you, you may need to confine him in a room on his own.
Fighting With Another Cat
What looks like fighting to you may be just playing to your cats! The fine line between playing and fighting is this: are they hurting each other?
Very often, the fighting is started by one cat. If you observe carefully, you will find that one of your cats frequently tries to ambush the other cat. A simple way to stop this problem is to hang a bell on the collar of this cat. This makes it harder for him to ambush the other cat, and will help to reduce the fights.
One more thing you can do is to trim the nails of the more aggressive cat. You can ask your vet to show you how to do this. With shorter nails, he won't be able to hurt the other cat as much.
Scratching Your Furniture
Unfortunately, this problem behavior is not possible to stop. What you can do is redirect kitty's attention to something else more acceptable to scratch, like a scratching post. You will need to experiment to discover which type of scratching posts your cat likes best. At the same time, you need to make it unpleasant for kitty to scratch your furniture. One way is to apply a kind of sticky pad to the surfaces which he likes to scratch. You can buy this sticky pad from your local pet shop. Keep scratching posts near all the surfaces which kitty likes to scratch, and he will quickly shift his attentions to these posts.
Spraying And Marking Territory
This is sometimes the toughest behavior to deal with, because there can be many reasons for cat spraying. The first step is to make sure all your cats are spayed or neutered. Spayed and neutered cats are less territorial, and rarely spray.
Sometimes your cats spray because they feel stressed. This could be caused by a change in your schedule, or the introduction of a new cat, or even by extra noise from road repairs outside your home.
Other times, if you have too many cats in your home, one or more of your cats will spray.
So, how can you stop this problem? First, you need to identify the reason for spraying, then eliminate that reason. Unfortunately, this is easier to say than to do. In May 2004, the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists published a case study where they took 3 or 4 years to stop this cat spraying and urination problem.
You may want to get some help from your vet. In some cases, he might prescribe some kind of cat Prozac which could help reduce the stress your cat is feeling. This would reduce the spraying problem.
Dealing with cat problems is tough unless you know kitty well. Sometimes, it can be very helpful to ask a third party like your vet for some help and advice.
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