How To Get Kitten To Stop Biting

[CurlyEmy]

I have a 3.5 month old kitten. He is very affectionate and playful. However, he bites me and everyone else a lot. He’ll come up to us and bite our finger, hand, elbows, ears, toes, etc. Sometimes they’re soft bites but sometimes they’re hard and they HURT. I tell him “Ow, no!!” But sometimes when I take my hand away he grabs on to it and bites even more. He’ll be cuddling and then kneading and start biting as he kneads too. I try to stop petting him or ignore him if he does but he continues. What should I do?

 

[rubysmama]

How old was he when you adopted him? Sometimes when kittens are taken from their mom and siblings too early they don't have time to learn cat etiquette, so their new human parent need to take on that job.

Here's a link with more info:
Teach Your Kitten How to Play Nice : The Humane Society of the United States

 

[CurlyEmy]

How old was he when you adopted him? Sometimes when kittens are taken from their mom and siblings too early they don't have time to learn cat etiquette, so their new human parent need to take on that job.

Here's a link with more info:
Teach Your Kitten How to Play Nice : The Humane Society of the United States

He was 13 weeks old when I got him. He was with his mom and siblings the whole time. I guess his mom just never corrected him?

 

[rubysmama]

Twelve weeks is the "recommended" age to keep kittens with their mom, so at 13 weeks, he wasn't adopted out too early. Course some cats are just biters. Here's a couple more articles that might have some more tips for you.

How To Stop Playtime Aggression In Cats
How To Deal With Cat "love Bites"?

 

[duncanmac]

Our boy Duncan was a biter when we first got him. He had no siblings and possibly no mother prior to when we got him at 12 weeks. He bit a lot at night and chased our feet and ankles something fierce.

We watched every "my cat bites" video and read every webpage. Some things helped - play with him before bed and setting a bedtime for us both helped but he was a little kitten who needed and wanted to play. Timeouts worked to a degree as well. We would escalate things: no, then no and put him on the floor a couple of times and then put him in his safe room for 5 minutes. If we couldn't do that, sometimes just saying no and turning around and totally ignoring him worked a bit. Nothing was perfect - he still had way too much energy. And you have to be totally consistent in some things: never play with him with your hands and always say no whenever he bites you.

The last step in every how-to was "get a second cat" so we got Barry. That worked and cut the biting down 99% We still get love bites and play bites here and there, but it is so much more manageable. The two cats spend a lot of time chasing and playing and work their energy out with each other.