Cat loves to grab my hair and chew on it with purr

Dear Cat lovers:

I had a wonderful cat Name Orange.
She is almost 3 years old and always adorable.
When she is happy, you can hear her purr even 2 meters away.

She had a very bad habit.
Usually 4am, she starts to stay around my pillow with purr and with her eyes squint. Actually I think she tries to tell me that she loves me very much and I do love those actions.

But after 10 minutes, she starts to grab my long hair and then chew my hair. I don't think she is angry with my not playing with her because she is still having her eyes squint and having the purr voice.
I saw some tv shows about teaching cats via the tv channel: Animal Planet. It said you need to let your cat know that you don't like a certain action by not watching the cat or ingore her intentionally.
So when she starts to grab my hair, I sit up and leave her on the pillow and get my head look up.

At first several times, I think she knows that I don't like her grab my hair, so she comes around and sits beside me. But when I liedown, she starts it again.

Is there any way to correct her bad habit?
I don't think it's because of the smell of shampoo.
I had tried different shampoo, she does the same thing.
Also, when my boy friend liedown on the pillow, she would do the same thing to him.

And she is not attacking us, because she is always grabbing my hair with very large purr voice. Is there any way that I can try?

I would love her to stay around me anywhere she likes only not to grab and chew my hair,so I can have great sleep quality. I was afraid to use some spray stuff, because I think she'll misunderstand that I don't like her to get around me. Can this be achieved? To have her stayd around but not to grab and chew? Please help.


Maggie

You are right - these are all signs of affection - your sweet baby loves you two very much.

The hair thing is a continuation of the kneading and purring. I'm not sure you can teach her to do just one and not the other. Wouldn't you prefer to teach her not to wake you up at 4AM? That would be easier to achieve than to get her to stop after she's already in the purring ecstasy.

Thank you for your reply!
Is there any way to teach her not to wake me up at 4AM?
I really want my cute cat can have a good sleep with me,
Please teach me if there is any way that I can try.
Usually before I went to bed, I spent 15-30 minutes to play with her, throw thing for her to chase.

But I think probably it's not enough to cost her energy.
Please do give me some suggestion so I can try ASAP.
Then I can focus on my daily job and not feel sleepy at day time...

Thanks for helping me out.


Best Regards,
Maggie

Can you please tell me some more about you and your cat? You said the cat is 3 years old. Is she neutered? Are there any medical problems? What is her daily routine? can you please tell me a little bit about her history and where you got her?

How many people are there in the home and what are their routines? What I want to know is what kind of interaction is the cat getting and when. Also - are there any other cats or other pets in the home?

When did that behavior start? Has she always been waking you up at 4AM? Have you tried anything to stop her so far? Are there any other behavior difficulties?

Sorry about all the questions. I am a cat behavior consultant and I have learned that sometimes some unexpected but relevant piece of information is hiding in the background

Dear Anne:

I want to say thank you at first.
Thanks for helping me out.
I'll write more about Orange and my life so you can give me some suggestions.

We are living in south part of Taiwan.
I met Orange at September 2000 at the ground floor of my ex-company.
She was about 9 months old and playing cockroches by herself.

She was fed by the neighbors around the office and that's why she is very close to human. We think she left her cat mommy when she's very small. She never does the massage actions like those kitties do to the mother cats while sucking milk.

She was neutered at around 1 year old.
After 2 months, she's getting too much weight 4.8 kgs.
My vet forgot to tell me to reduce the food.

I took her to my vet 3 weeks ago.
4.4 kgs is the currently weight, and my vet said it's very proper for her. My vet said Orange is a very healthy cat.

Usually I get out of bed at around 8-9am and go to work.
Before I leave, I'll put some dry food for her.
9-10Pm is the time I come home.
I'll play with her for around 15-20 minutes, get her to do some exercise or chase for a toy mouse.
After that, I'll feed her dinner, also dry food.
While she eats dinner, I go to take a shower.
Then watch TV for around 20 minutes then sleep.

Orange is a very energetic cat.
I never saw her sleep when I was awake except the night she got neutered. She never slept beside me except the weather is cold.
She is very aggresive in our relationship.
If she would like to have people to be her companion, she would do everything to break what I was doing at that time. But if I want her to stay with me and she's not in the mood, she'll run away immediately. I always said that she's the boss.
Although she never sleep beside me, she does come to my bed every night around 4am to purr and grab my hair. I do love the purr part.
She is just like a spoil child to me. I think I didn't learn to know the correct to teach her to respect me. So sometimes she would bite me to get my attention.

I tried to feed her by hand 3 weeks ago.
I got this idea from the program of Animal Planet.
Orange became more and more closer to me since then.
She starts to stay and sleep with me right after I go to bed.
And became much tender to me.
But still the grabbing hair part will start at around 4am.

I don't know if those information are enough for you to give me suggestions. If you need more information, please let me know.
I'm so glad that I can really find help via internet coz here is Taiwan, most of people don't know any animal behavior consultant. No to mention to find a good one.

Thanks for helping me out again.
If you need any other information, please let me know.

The attachment is Orange's lately picture.
Hope you like it.

How cool! A member from Taiwan! Welcome to the boards Maggielin! And sorry about the late reply - I've been a bit busy but you and Orange have been on my mind

Orange looks like a lovely cat - 80% of orange tabbies are males so orange females are quite special!

Sounds to me like you have a healthy energetic cat that needs lots of attention and stimuli. In order to curb that undesired night time behavior, you need to provide her with more attention and stimuli during the day. This is the first step - then we'll talk about what to do when she's actually coming to you at 4 AM.

Sometimes the best way to add interest to the life of an indoors kitty is to adopt another cat. If you get two friendly felines at your home they will keep each other company and both cats will be less bored and happier. Of course adoption is not always a viable or even a good option. Adopting a new cat means committing yourself to its care and welfare. You may not be able to afford the additional financial expense, or maybe you're not allowed more than one pet where you live. Also, not all cats benefit from feline company - some cats simply want to be the only cat in the home. If you consider going this way make sure you know how to introduce the cats properly - a good introduction is very important for their future relationship.

If you can't or don't want to add another cat to your household right now, here are some tips for how to keep your indoors kitty happy by adding space and stimuli.

Once you implement some of those, I would suggest the following to make your nights more peaceful. Approximately one hour before you go to bed, have a good playtime session with Orange. Use an interactive toy of the fishing rod type (you can see some examples here) and try to simulate hunting time Pretend that the toy at the end of the line is a mouse and move it around the room at different speeds, letting kitty catch it from time to time. Try to make the game as energetic and playful as you can, as long as Orange finds it interesting and fun. About 20 minutes is a good length for this to be effective.

After you finish playing, give Orange something nice to eat - perhaps canned food or even a favorite treat. This should be about the size of a mouse so don't give her too much . After that night time routine (and provided she has had increased stimuli during the day as well) she is very likely to go to sleep.

Now comes the more difficult part. If she still tries to wake you up at night, you need to give her zero attention. In fact what you should do is pretend to be asleep. If she starts kneading you and pulling at your hair, then just get her off you and off the bed. Do this quietly and peacefully and resume "sleeping" immidiately. Don't talk to her or to anyone else. If all she does is meow or walk around her - just don't do nothing. Try to sleep or at least pretend to be sleeping. Within a few nights she should get the message. Only when you wake up on your own at your designated time, only then you can lavish her with love and attention.

I had a client who did this and used an alarm clock to tell her when it was ok to "wake up" and give her kitty the attention she was looking for. The woman was lying in bed and waiting for the time to come. I told her to pretend to be asleep so she couldn't even watch her clock - she had to wait for the alarm to ring. Within 2-3 days the cat realized that the alarm call was the que since then, whenever the cat came to her bed at 4AM she would go to the alarm clock, sit in front of it and gaze at it intently waiting for the ring she didn't wake her owner anymore - she knew she wouldn't get any attention until the alarm call

You can try this with or without the alarm clock. Just make sure you are very consistent. If you give up after some time and give your cat the attention before it's time for you to wake up you will be reinforcing her unwanted behavior because she will learn that being persistent pays off in the end.

Hope this helps and do let us know how it's going.

Dear Anne:

Thanks for your suggestion.
I'll start to try the zero attention method tonight and come back to report lately.
Great Great thanks to you....


Best Regards,
Maggie

Awww, all my cats do this sometimes, but mostly Tage, I love it, I don't mind at all. If I happen to have to do something else I just get up, they can't get to my hair while I'm standing.

If you get bugged by it, just tell her no, but thank you anyway.

It's good that she's not attacking you!!!

My mother has gotten her hair permed for years now, one of the cats we used to have DC... apparently didn't like the smell if it very much after she came home from the hair salon one day. She was sitting in her normal chair watching TV, and DC came up behind her and lunged at her, jumped onto her head and started biting the hair and then ran off, lol.

Crazy cats. I love them.

I think it's a lovely show of affection - the problem was the timing

When applying this method - please make sure to start at the beginning - give her extra attention and stimuli. Don't try to jump ahead into just ignoring her at night - it probably wouldn't work by itself.

It works.

After my several days' experiments, it seems giving my Orange zero attention would work. I did use an alarm with the experiment. On the second day experiment, Ornage had already got the point, she just stood beside me, and waited for the alarm to ring. Perfect!!

On the third and fourth day, once Orange heard the ring of the alarm, she would run out for food or start her purr to wake me up. But on the fifth day, she started to push the alarm by head, I think she tried to make the alarm ring by herself.

Should I put my alarm to somewhere that Orange can't reach?

By the way, Orange is a very curious and fumble cat.
She likes to bite everything on my desk, ex: creditcard bill, documents, toilet paper, paper bages. She also likes to use her front leg to touch things and try to push things until it falls to the ground, ex: my glasses, cups, photo frames, my mouse.....

I know she's not doing it to get my attention. She is just so curious about those things. When I first adapted her, I found my papers and cups fell on the ground when I got back from work. She likes to bite any paper bags to pieces even I yelled at her. Giving her zero attention didn't make her feel sorry at all. She bites paper bags happily and doesn't care about my being angry at all.

So far, I am living by my own with Orange, so I put everything in the drawers to keep Orange away from it. But my boy friend and I plan to get married next year, I hope that at least I'll be able to put some beautiful photo frames in the livingroom to decorate our new home. Is there any way that I can teach Orange not to push photoframes to the ground?

Please provide me some new ways to teach my Orange.
I do hope to make her a energetic but well-educated cat.

Would you think that I'm a demanding mom and have too much expectaion for my Orange? Should I just get everything in the drawers? Please let me know your opinions!

Both the time thing and the hair thing. I have hip-length hair, and Finn grabs it at every opportunity. We get up around 5:30 every AM, so on weekends at 5:30 Finn's up and ready to play. We just kick him out of the bedroom much to his dismay. Never really bothered me, but it is nice to know that we'ew not the only ones.

Finn's a tabby too. (Wonder if there's a connection?)

zazzles has started laying all over me by my pillow the last 2 days and is now chewing my hair too..its really quite odd..Hes normally not real cuddly, he sleeps by my feet and is being affectionate.not that i mind..its just not something he does usual. Laying on his back and purring loud lol.Norm Doom sleeps where zazzles now is and dooms at my feet at the moment

My cat does that same thing to my hair... and when I try to stop her she gets mad... I really want to know why they do that

Hi!

My purring chewy "problem" is only a problem because I  thought that he might chew through my hair and damage it. He does it right at bedtime and the cuddles up around my head for sleeping.

As for 4AM wake up calls - I will try the suggestion with alarm clocks. So far we have had to take our 10 week old out of the room and close the door, as he gets hyperactive and doesn't seem to actually realise that he is hurting me if he pounces on my face with claws out and bites my nose - he is actually purring the whole time.

As far as I know cats are usually active during sunrise and sunset and they spend most of the day sleeping. That should explain the bad timing. I sleep all day and am awake at night so I noticed Chopin's very playful at around 4.30am onwards. [emoji]128522[/emoji] he also loves to grab and chew my hair, especially since its pink. [emoji]128514[/emoji]

This is a new problem with my cat Shadow. I adopted her and her 2 kittens 5 months ago. My husband leaves for work later than me around 7am. I return from work between 4:30 and 5:30pm. They get unlimited love and attention (they are my main focus while at home) until bedtime around 10pm.to maintain consistency they are fed at 5:30am and 5:30 pm even on the weekends.
It was like clockwork. They would start walking on me to wake me up around 5:30 am which was fine because that was time to get up. Then recently Shadow (spayed female domestic shorthair between a year and 2 years rescued) startd chewing on my hair/scalp and walking back and forth on me at 4am. It started sporadiclly. I didn't give in and feed early. I just gently push her away. It is no longer sporadic. It's every morning at 4am. I have never given in and now spend an hour and 30 min ignoring her but having to push her away bc the hair chewing can hurt. I do not think she's being agressive. I think she either wants food or attention. But I need it to stop. She and even the kittens don't bother my husband at all in the am.