Stopping paw sucking

My 2 month old kitten I've had since she was 3 weeks old has developed a habit of sucking her paw pad when she's hungry. I'm worried about her developing some kind of blister/hicky on her paw and want to get her to stop this as she is underweight and will only eat all her food if she is sitting on my lap. I know, spoilt girl.
I've tried feeding her as soon as she starts this up for a week but no luck.

I'm concerned that you're developing an association between the undesired behavior and the desired feeding. i.e. cat wants to be fed, cat sucks paw, cat gets fed. I'm not sure you need to be concerned about your kitten sucking her paw in the first place, but feeding her when she doesn't certainly isn't going to cause it to stop. Probably she'll grow out of it. If it was my cat, I'd just ignore it unless the paw actually did show signs of irritation. Then if it did, there's some bitter-tasting stuff you can put on, but don't know what it's called -- a vet would know.

Okay Thanks, I will try the ignore it method.
She will meow at me when she's hungry if I'm sitting at the computer but if she's asleep or I'm relaxing on the sofaand gets hungry, suck, suck, suck, off she goes.
I see there's someone else with a sucking problem, is this a hand-reared kitten thing?

You should try to put her on a feeding schedule. We feed our kittens when we wake up in the morning, usually 8am, and when my husband gets off work at 5. Our inside cats have hard food down all the time and they do fine eating whenever they get hungry.

I do! I do! I do!
I feed her at 8am, 12am, 4pm, 8pm, 12pm because she has antibiotics that she takes every 8hrs for the last 2 weeks.
I can't free feed her as she doesn't seem like dry food and its too hot to leave wet food out.
If I try to stop her sucking her paw she starts on the closest body part she can find.
She even tried my husbands nipple at 4 weeks old!

Can I ask why you have a kitten so young? If you posted about it elsewhere I apologize

Let's say you feed her at 8 am. How long does it take before she gets hungry? Try to figure that out and then feed her before she shows signs of being hungry. Also try to mix some dry food with the wet food. Try different flavours - tuna is usually a hit! But use kitten food, she will need that until she is about a year old.

Instead of feeding her on your lap, you may try to sit beside her on the floor, and then move further away little by little.

I am not sure the sucking has to do with being hungry, it may be a reflex behaviour from having lost her mother too early. It may help to play with her a lot, which will stimulate her and keep her mind off sucking. At least it is worth a try.

Good luck!

Originally Posted by ash_bct

Can I ask why you have a kitten so young? If you posted about it elsewhere I apologize

Click to expand...

My signature says it all, I found her with a gummed up eye on my front porch meowing.
We see dead kittens regularly in our area, usually starvation so decided to help her.
Here she is the day after we found her/she found us.