Cat's while lovable creatures can have the most annoying and even harmful behaviours, such as biting.
There are a number of reasons cats bite but how do you stop them biting you and your furniture.
Depending on if they are using biting as an attention seeking behaviour or a reaction to teething will influence how you start to deal with this annoying behaviour.
If they are still a kitten chances are they haven't learnt wrong from right yet.
So you need to teach them.
You can either use positive reinforcement to reward their good behaviour or punishment to get them to stop the biting behaviour.
Sometimes it easier to punish bad behaviour as it will be clear to them that if they bite they will be punished.
In this scenario your cat is being punished for particular behaviour instead of being rewarded for general good behaviour.
However positive reinforcement has an important place in training your cat, and it works particularly well for getting them to learn new behaviours as opposed to getting them to stop bad behaviours.
If your feline friend is older and has just started this behaviour and become bad tempered, check if they are off their food, if they are chances are unwell and you'd be grumpy if you felt ill too.
Keep a close eye on them and take them to the vets if they don't seem to be getting any better.
Once they're better their biting should stop if it doesn't you may need to remind them that this behaviour is not acceptable.
If you've got an adult cat who bites and they don't seem to be ill or stressed out by their environment for example after a house move, then it's time to start retraining them.
There are a number of ways you can do this to stop your cats from biting.
My favourite and this works well for those felines who demand a lot of attention from you is to withdraw attention when then begin to bite.
Just remove them from your knee and ignore their demands for a stroke.
Eventually they will work out that trying to bite gets them less attention and will gradually stop them from trying.
This however must be kept up, if you allow them to bite you on occasion, then you're sending mixed signals.
If your kitty is biting because they are bad tempered, use a rolled up newspaper or magazine and bang it down on something hard so it makes a big bang, do not hit your kitty with it! This is generally enough to make your them stop and will distract them.
This should hopefully make them associate this behaviour with the loud and unpleasant noise.
Sometimes they will bite just because they want something to clean their teeth on or wear them down, if this is the case make sure that they have new toys to play with and specifically designed dental biscuits which are hard and satisfying crunchy for your cats.
There are a number of reasons cats bite but how do you stop them biting you and your furniture.
Depending on if they are using biting as an attention seeking behaviour or a reaction to teething will influence how you start to deal with this annoying behaviour.
If they are still a kitten chances are they haven't learnt wrong from right yet.
So you need to teach them.
You can either use positive reinforcement to reward their good behaviour or punishment to get them to stop the biting behaviour.
Sometimes it easier to punish bad behaviour as it will be clear to them that if they bite they will be punished.
In this scenario your cat is being punished for particular behaviour instead of being rewarded for general good behaviour.
However positive reinforcement has an important place in training your cat, and it works particularly well for getting them to learn new behaviours as opposed to getting them to stop bad behaviours.
If your feline friend is older and has just started this behaviour and become bad tempered, check if they are off their food, if they are chances are unwell and you'd be grumpy if you felt ill too.
Keep a close eye on them and take them to the vets if they don't seem to be getting any better.
Once they're better their biting should stop if it doesn't you may need to remind them that this behaviour is not acceptable.
If you've got an adult cat who bites and they don't seem to be ill or stressed out by their environment for example after a house move, then it's time to start retraining them.
There are a number of ways you can do this to stop your cats from biting.
My favourite and this works well for those felines who demand a lot of attention from you is to withdraw attention when then begin to bite.
Just remove them from your knee and ignore their demands for a stroke.
Eventually they will work out that trying to bite gets them less attention and will gradually stop them from trying.
This however must be kept up, if you allow them to bite you on occasion, then you're sending mixed signals.
If your kitty is biting because they are bad tempered, use a rolled up newspaper or magazine and bang it down on something hard so it makes a big bang, do not hit your kitty with it! This is generally enough to make your them stop and will distract them.
This should hopefully make them associate this behaviour with the loud and unpleasant noise.
Sometimes they will bite just because they want something to clean their teeth on or wear them down, if this is the case make sure that they have new toys to play with and specifically designed dental biscuits which are hard and satisfying crunchy for your cats.
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