kitty vs baby

They play very well together, abby is 14 weeks old, and my daughter Caity is 6mths old, the only problem I have is teaching Abby not to bite. She doesnt bite hard, but I dont want her to think its ok either. I clip her claws regularly so she cant scratch but her teeth are super sharp. Any ideas???

Gail...does Abby have a playmate?? At that young age she wants to tossle and play. It may be worth it to get a second kitten.

Katie

You'd wanna get Abby to stop biting. I dont know how but i used to play tug of war with Vinny when he was a kitten. By tug of war i mean having him bite my finger and stuff. He loved that. Now that he's a big guy, he still loves to bite. I dont mind because it doesn't really hurt me, but he goes after my friends. He soo loves to bite. I hope there are some suggestions for you to train Abby not to bite. For some reason though Vinny doesn't bite my Wife.

Here are some online articles I found:

http://www.perfectpaws.com/agg.html

http://www.perfectpaws.com/handle.html

http://www.thepetprofessor.com/cat-info/cat-biting.html

http://www.ivillage.com/pets/expert/..._69705,00.html

vyrUS..I'm afraid that by playing tug of war wth your cat..it decided that was an "ok" behavior. You will have to redirect it's attention now to things like a feather toy, toy mouse etc.

Katie

we cant afford to get another kitten. But they do play very well together, i have been tapping her on the head and saying no biting, when she does bite, and I have noticed the last day that if she goes to bite my daughter Caity I just have to say Abby no biting, and she stops. So maybe its working!!

I'm glad to hear things are going a little better!

Sometimes it helps to spray the cat with a little water gun and saying "No" everytime it tries to bit. Then eventually the cat will learn that it is wrong to bite your daughter.

Even better than spraying water or tapping the cat's head, is to simply blow a puff of air into the cat's face and make a hissing noise when she bites. This is what her momma would do if she were playing too hard with her. She will respond well to this and it will cause no harm to her relationship with you.

I've been having the same thing with our new fur baby, he plays too rough. Spraying water does not seem to deter him. I actually think he likes it! I'm going to try blowing the puff of air and hissing.

By the way, my Siamese would put her teeth on our daughter's wrist but only hard enough to let the baby know "that was enough" (the baby would grab her tail or ears as babies are wont to do), but she never hurt our baby and would tolerate behaviour from the baby that she would not tolerate from anyone else.

Good luck with the stop biting issue.