Sucking/chewing...

Recently my boyfriend and I just bought 3 little siamese kittens. The pet store said there were two different litters.. and from watching their behavior and looking at the size we've come to the conclusion that two of them are older than one and from the same litter. The older ones are darker at their points (ears, nose, feet, tail) and their body is a bit darker in color as well. The little one is lighter than the other two, considerably smaller, and acts much younger.

They all get along wonderfully since they were living together in the same cage at the pet store. However, I seem to be having one problem with the youngest one. At night when we go to bed they get in the bed with us. Usually they sleep at the foot of the bed. The little one is trying to nurse on the other kittens at night.. and no matter what I do I can't stop him. I read that siamese were prone to sucking/chewing on things even into adulthood. Any ideas on how to break him of this? The other kittens just let him do it, but I don't want him thinking that they are his parents... when they can't be more than 2 weeks older than he.

The two oldest were born on April 1 and the other I'm guessing a 1 or 2 weeks later. Any advice on how to stop this would be greatly appreciated.

--Cassandra

Unfortunatley there is no way to stop them from sucking on each other. They do this because they were taken away from their mothers too early. If they are sucking or chewing on something like wool,cords or threads, you can use a bitter spray. It is very common for pet store cats as they are shipped from kitten mills and taken from mom very early to make it to the stores in time to be sold. As most people love kittens.

Thank you Sandie.

I don't like the idea of my cute little boys being taken from their mother too soon. Though its a little too late now. I'm very new at being a mommmy to cats and have a lot to learn. I've spent the past three days diving into information learning as much as possible.

This sucking problem is stressing. The noise is so loud at night.. it makes it hard to fall asleep and I worry about him putting the other two through discomfort. I realize that he probably does it because of the content feeling it gives him. I just wish I had a way to break him of it *sigh*

He only seems to suck on the other two kittens. The spray is an idea though I don't know if I want to spray them with it because they then won't want to clean themselves.

I suppose I could seperate them and put the little one away from the others.. but they are always cuddled together and I'd hate to put the little by himself with nobody to cuddle with. I don't want him being lonely.

Hopefully he'll grow out of this. Thanks again Sandie for the advice. I'll discuss this all with Craig when he gets home from work.

--Cassandra

I can't see what the problem is. The kitten will grow out of the sucking behaviour. Even older cats will do this when very happy, especially with wool - they can pull up a little bit of it and it sort of makes a teat. As to the noise factor, don't laugh, but earplugs are wonderful things. My husband snores and I've been using them for years.
I agree with Sandie about pet shop purchases (though very many of them do end up in good homes like these kittens did) but it's timely to reinforce the evils of petshops - they promote impulse buying, puppy farms, kitten farms, backyard breeders etc, and the animals are often reared under deplorable conditions. The American Humane Society (Association?) had figures stating that twice as many puppies are actually bred as are sold through petshops - half the puppies bred on puppy farms do not survive either their rearing conditions or transportation to petshops. I believe in the US that the two biggest petstores no longer sell pups and kittens (Petsmart and Petsco?) because of increasing public awareness of the horrors of puppy/kitten farms. Britain is going the same way and even here in Australia we recently have a petstore chain that sells no live animals at all (Pet Cafe), though we still have plenty of traditional petshops, 4 in this town alone, and we are just 80,000 people.

Hi Cassandra,

Siamese kittens need to stay with mom a little longer than other cats...while I do not have any hard scientific data to back me up, I do have personal experience, and that sometimes beats the socks off of hard data. It has been my experience that Meezers need at least 12 weeks before they are completely emotionally and physcially ready to leave their mom. Some breeders I know even advocate 14 to 16 weeks, but I am not certain this isn't to more readily be able to recognize desired show or breeding traits. To separate them earlier than 12 weeks seems to encourage this type (as well as other types) of behavior. And, sometimes they grow out of it, but sometimes they don't. While this behavior is certainly not of a serious or harmful nature to the cat, to you or to your property in any way, if it bothers you then it bothers you, it needs to be addressed and should not be minimized.

I had a Siamese once that would do this on my earlobe and the resulting noises were frustrating to say the least when I was trying to sleep - most often needing to be up way too early for words the next morning.

I found that in the case of my Siamese, if I provided her a surrogate (I used a Snip The Siamese Beanie Baby) she would focus her attention on that. But still, we had the resulting noises that prohibited sleep. So, I was finally forced to move her bed into another room. So long as she had her fleecy bed in front of the fireplace and her Snip Beanie, she was content to stay right there. I hated kicking her out of the bedroom, but my husband said it was either the cat or me, (since this cat would sleep wherever I was) so I made my choice.

I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that for you, I personally like to have a pile of cats on the bed with me as I sleep, but sometimes, it just isn't practical.

Best of luck, and thanks for posting,

Gaye

Welcome to the club!

My Sphynx MooShoo, who just turned 1 yesterday, sucks on his own teat at night in order to fall asleep. At first it was hard to sleep with the noise but now I'm actually used to it. I have never tried to stop him because this brings him so much comfort and he's been through alot in his young life. He too was taken away from his mother early. So I just let him suck away. He's such a wonderful loving cat.