Help Please Kitten Attacking and Biting My Face

My 8 week old kitten Ollie is always attcking and biting my hand, elbow, ankles, face and neck. I raised him since he is 2 days old. He started this behavior about 2 weeks ago and everything I do does not seem to be working. I have read to not pull away ( my hands, elbow). I have given him toys and stuffed animals to do it to, but he wants me more. My only concern is that he is attacking and biting my face. I don't want him to grow up and be a 12 pound cat doing this. Please if anyone has any advice I could really use it.

He has no mother to teach him better and no other kittens to play with, so he's turning to you.

Hiss at him when he bites and tell him no, and since he's young you could try scuffing him and setting him away from you. That would instantly make him stop and should calm him. Get more wand type toys for him to play with and if you can afford to do so - another kitten would really help (preferably a 12 week old or older so it knows some cat behavior rules already).

I think there was a thread similar to yours and I'm sure somebody would post the link soon.

My baby cat used to do that a lot when I was least expecting, it was really annoying & sometimes shocking especially when it happened while I was playing with her

Sometimes so hard not to physically punish her especially after I got multiple scratches on my face because of her attack but unfortunately physical punishment won't work on cats at all

What I used to do was that, whenever she did that, I screamed "OUCH!!" VERY LOUD and walked away leaving her where she was & ignored her completely. If I was in a living room, I'd leave her there & go to another room, locked the door if I could. After 30 min or so, I walked back to where she was & played with her again.

There are a couple of articles on this site that might prove to be helpful:

Ouch!!! How to stop cat aggression toward people. [see the section marked "Play Aggression"]

Playtime Aggression

You can also search the Behavior forum for additional ideas. This seems to be a rather common issue.

We found that the best medicine to remedy this issue at our house was--another cat.

Seriously though I haven't had my face bitten in 3 weeks and its great!

We found Jack at 10 weeks old but he had been roaming the streets--he lacked alot of the manners that momma and siblings would have taught him. We persisted in trying to correct the biting--it settled down some but until we brought home Harley 3 weeks ago I was still getting bitten each morning on my face, arms and hands.

Leslie

I couldn't find either of these articles unfortunately. When I clicked the links I got an error 404.

I created a new post in the support forum about the issue with the links. If anyone else is getting the 404 error on the article links please add your information to the new thread I made in the support forum. Please note what web browser you are using along with the date and time you are receiving the error message. I was having this error message previously when replying to threads. I have also notified Anne and jcat privately since they were working on the issue I had. In the mean time if anyone needs to read the articles in this thread you can click on the word Articles at the top of the home page. The linked articles are in the behavior section and you click see more articles to access them. The articles can be accessed directly instead of using the links in this thread.

It might be because those replies were from 2008.

I think these are the articles linked.
Cat Aggression Toward People
How To Stop Playtime Aggression In Cats

I did a loud wailing "OW" whenever I got claws or teeth. I used scruff removal if they climbed me. All the times they used claws or teeth I ignored them for 15-30 minutes. I only play with toys not hands. Lastly for wee kittens when they start biting your fingers I shove my finger(s) deeper into their mouth until they start to gag a little, remove my fingers then ignore them. It is more of a 'fingers are to big to bite lesson.' Lots & lots of play helps. For our semi-feral adult I did the two finger tap on the side of his face with a no (my hissing sucks) then ignored him. Note I said tap not hit or bop. It is how cats say no (usually with a hiss.)

rubysmama said:

It might be because those replies were from 2008.

I think these are the articles linked.
Cat Aggression Toward People
How To Stop Playtime Aggression In Cats

Click to expand...

Yup! Thank you so much for linking to these!