do you let your kitty wrestle with you?

[howtoholdacat]

Originally Posted by cesg

I know the prevailing thought is to not allow your cat (or kitten) to bite your hands in play because they will continue to do so...

but after fostering kittens for many many years, I have found that if I don't teach them how hard they are allowed to bite my hand then they tend to increase their bite strength as they get older - which we all know is very dangerous.

I start when they are young, allowing them to chew on my hand (a natural behavior not only for cats but teething cats) and gently repremand them when they bite too hard with either the "ow" cry that their siblings do or a soft and kind "gentle". When they don't listen, they are placed on the floor and ignored for a few minutes.

In the hundreds of kittens I've fostered I've only had one kitten who didn't care to learn to be gentle.

I think it is very important to teach kittens that they need to be gentle when biting, because no matter how much you love them and how careful you are with them, there is going to be a time when they feel the need to give you a warning bite. Several of my own cats have done it to me for various reasons (One while grooming the other was in pain and I didn't realize I was making it worse), and they know to gently put their mouths on me and not bite down. Very effective for both of us.

My thoughts too. I allow all of my cats to wrestle with me and teach an appropriate level of response. In the case of Hemmy, this took some work as he came to me as an adult and had to learn to curb the intensity of his bite. He did learn, however, and we have a good time "fighting" with each other these days.

I really think teaching my cats how and when they may play bite is one of the best things I ever did. They know the boundaries and I just enjoy the game, even if sometimes I end up with a scratch if someone gets really wound up (they are corrected for it!

) It's really just a personal choice.

 

[darkmavis]

The rule in my household is "Hands are not toys!" If I knew how to train an almost 2 year old cat how to 'play-bite', then maybe the wrestling thing would be ok. But until then, hands are a no-no. When Genever stops killing the mouse and starts killing my hand, play time stops. (she's getting there, but not quite catching on totally, i think it's because SOMEONE (BF) lets her get away with biting...

)

Basically I don't like to get bitten, and I don't want to ever have to deal with someone else getting bitten. Animal bites are a touchy subject, and you never know how a supposedly cat-friendly visitor will react to a bite. So that's why I don't do the wrestle thing. But like others have said, every cat is different, so do what you're comfortable with.

 

[donavatar]

I used to wrestle with my cat all the time.  I would walk up to him, pet him and say "Ya wanna wrastle?"  Then I would take him by the shoulders, turn him over on his back and "pin" him for a second.  If he spread his feet out to make it harder to turn him over, I took that as a no and would pet him or bedazzle him with a toy instead.

After the "pin" I would touch him in random spots and let him scratch and bite to his heart's content.  I'd let him succeed in landing the "blow" about half the time.  He loved it.  I know that because I never pressured him to continue it.  As soon as he wanted to stop he would stand up and be petted.  When he was younger he would really go at it.  Of course, as he got older he had less and less desire to wrestle.

Applying my hindsight to the "never let your cat bite you or he'll think it's OK to bite whenever he pleases" sentiment, I have to recommend against letting your cat bite you only because of the Bullies in Blue.  My cat never bit anyone - family or visitor - outside of our little wrestling sessions, and he was a perfectly well-behaved cat all around.    However, I get pretty much 0 visitors.  Also, my skin is like armor plating and no feline has ever drawn more than a drop or two of blood from me.  The thinner skinned would have been really ripped up by one of these sessions.

So the thin-skinned should use caution and stop when they lose the match, but that would be the only caveat if it weren't for the Bullies.  Consider the problem of a pansy not-really-a-friend friend that comes over for a visit and gets bitten or scratched.  Even though the "injury" was laughable, Pansy sues you and/or has the Bullies murder your family member.  No matter how much your cat enjoys it, wrestling with him or her is not worth the risk of legalized murder.  Then again, Pansy might provoke even the most well-mannered cat and the end result would be the same, so some would reasonably consider my argument moot.

 

[ibiscribe]

Cesg is right on target; that's exactly how my mother did it and that's how I still play with kittens. "Dog people", eg. trainers, have figured out that puppies need to learn bite inhibition at a young age, and I don't think kittens are much different in that regard.

We wrestled with our cats if they wanted to, but not with bare hands--it wouldn't necessarily make a cat "more violent" but they can get confused and think that you want to wrestle when you really just want to scratch their bellies. We always used a few thick socks like a glove. It was funner on both sides that way--and meant that Keef and Tohey, who had unrealistically sharp teeth, could still play with us without inadvertently causing damage.

I don't think that kind of play needs to be discouraged when the cat understands how to play gently and the human understands how not to play in an overbearing/taunting way. The only downside to wrestling with our cats the way we did was that some of our socks went missing, only to be found later tucked behind doors or in the kitty litter(!) or in other odd places. Basically they considered the sock to be the toy, not the hand.

 

[sk_pacer]

The Spotted Wonder........er Da Magpie will wrestle a bit and she started killing my hands at the ripe old age of 4 months. She never bites but will gnaw on my fingers a bit. She never used claws from the very start but would grip my hands with paw pads only and can lift herself up like that, never a claw out of place. Until I had her in the house, I never realised how strong a cat's paws were even without claws; yep, she has them and has never clawed me, accidentally or otherwise. Da Lip will sometimes wrestle but he's nailed me with a claw  a few times, but never bites beyond the same gnawing Da Magpie does and he restricts that to one thunbnail. None of my cats has ever bitten anyone, play or otherwise.

 

[gibbly]

I wrestled with all my cats when they were babies, I thought it was funny to get them all worked up xD, I was mean, but I never hurt them ofcourse, and yes, I was guilty of pestering them when they didn't want to play u_u

Finn still likes to wrestle every once in a while or on my prompting to get her going o3o but she's usually (about 90% of the time) very gentle

Paint and Emry have grown out of wrestling however ;_;