Play fighting

Sometimes our two cats play fighting gets out of hand.Snowball is our 6 month old kitten & Buster our 10 year old,their both males.Snowball attacks all the time.
At first Buster played nicely but lately there playing has gotten a little more serious with Snowball screaming in pain.You see snowball likes to bite buster on the ears & buster resents this big time & i don't blame him cause it must hurt a lot.Even though snowball cops a beating from buster & retreats 5 minutes later hes back again giving buster grief.
We don't want to seperate them as most of the time they get on very well & we are hoping snowball will settle down in time.
Where just a bit worried buster might do some real damage to snowball.
What can we do to teach snowball that fighting buster is not a good idea?

Thanks

What a naughty kitten!
I have confidence in Buster. When his patience runs out, he will do something about it. A good kitty scolding maybe once or twice, and Snowball will stop.

Seems like Snowball keeps going back even though Buster is hurting him. I really don't know what to do with this one aside from coating Snowball's ears with something which Buster won't like to taste... But I'm not sure what will work without having averse effects on Snowball's ears.

Perhaps you might separate them when they are unsupervised and only let them play together when there's someone around to watch? I do that with my cats, my 2 mth-old will harrass his mother till she's frustrated and panting and running up and down the stairs trying to get away from him. That's when we actually take the son upstairs to his room so both of them can get some rest, and to avoid any injury that the frustrated mother might inflict. I have found that as the amount of time they spend playfighting with each other, they are calmer in each other's presence. Especially the young one. He will now accept his mother's efforts at grooming him, and is not as excitable as before (when even a tail-tap can send him into a frenzy of excitement).

Maybe over time the situation with your cats will get better, esp since you mentioned that they get along well most of the time. Good luck!

Our two males, father and son, did also wrestled much this way. Very fun and sometimes quite hard almost as real fights!

I think your two are doing OK.

Yes Snowball can be naughty but look at that face He looks so innocent

Cheers