Whiskers missing!

Ivan, my 8 year old DLH has decided that our 12 week old kitten Frankie is the love of his life and they play and sleep together constantly. Ivan also feels it is his job to groom the kitten from head to toe. Unfortunately, he spends most of that attention on the kitten's face. He is biting off Frankie's eyebrows and whiskers. Frankie currently has eyebrows over only one eye and all the whisker's on one cheek are about 1/4 inch! Ivan will bite at them like he is pursuing a flea or some sort of "dirt" in Frankie's coat. None of the cats have fleas and there is nothing on Frankie's face to attract this much attention.

Ivan used to try to do this to my recently deceased adult male cat. But that cat would haul off and whack Ivan when he tried it and Ivan would give up (although he was occasionally successful with an eyebrow or two). He had never tried the whisker's before.

Frankie doesn't seem to mind this attention and just closes his eyes and purrs while he is being "trimmed". The only way I can intervene is to physically remove the kitten to a different room and keep it there. Ivan calls the kitten to him all the time and if he hears Frankie meowing, he comes running. Separating them will certainly make both of them very unhappy.

Any suggestions? If I had a digital camera I would post a picture - if it weren't so pitiful looking to see a kitten with his whisker's gone, it would be comical...

I don't have any solutions for you, but that is soooo sweet that Ivan wants to take care of Frankie :kitty5:

I would get a spray bottle of bitter apple. Take a q-tip and routinely wipe the whiskers with this liquid. That should stop the inquisitive gnawing. You might also want to get one of those rawhide chips for dogs? Give that to kitty instead to see if he will nibble on that-

I tried the bitter apple the other day. If anything, it made it worse - Ivan had something that he really needed to remove from Frankie's face.

Yes, it is very cute to watch this enormous male cat washing this tiny kitten's face. But, the end result is not as cute! Anyone have any idea how quicly whiskers are replaced? Ivan has had one white whisker (he's all black) for about 18 months now! I hope it won't take that long for Frankie to replace these stubby ones.

I had two males about 18 months apart. The younger one chewed on the older one's whiskers for the entire 15 years of his life! Alexander (the culprit) never seemed to be doing it maliciously, just overzealous grooming. Or maybe it was a dominance thing. The older cat (Sebastian) seemed completely oblivious to the fact that he was being "barbered"!

The vet tried for years to figure out how to get him to stop, but it didn't seem to cause Sebastian any problems..Since he did not go outside, it wasn't critical that he had a full set of whiskers.

If your kitten will be going outside, then you might need to keep searching for a solution. I kept a squirt bottle handy and stopped Alexander whenever I caught him in the act, and that seemed to help keep things under control.

Painting any kind of bitter tasting solution on the whiskers won't work, because the victim will eventually clean his own face and end up tasting the bitter stuff himself!

Good luck and try not to worry!