I adopted a six month old kitten from the shelter last month. She has been very sick and now is finally healthy again. Ive noticed over the last 2 weeks since she got healthy, that she has been grabbing at my face with her paws and trying to bite and suckle on my chin. It is not a painful bite , but still is very annoying when I am trying to sleep. It really only happens after she has been laying around on my chest for 30mins or more.
Is this a natural reaction from not being weened properly? Does she think my chin is possibly her mothers teat? What can I do about this behavoir with out scolding her for loving me like another cat?
I’ve never had a cat before so I do not know if this is normal or what it is really. Shed some light please
My bottle-raised kitty did this. Yeah, it’s probably a leftover from not being weaned properly - 6 weeks is rather young. You will just have to move her and say “No!” when she does it. It will take time, though.
Bitey still licks my neck (she’s almost 3 now), but nothing like the annoying chin suckle or the painful earlobe suckle.
My Briareos does the same thing, only he does it to the side of my neck, just below the ear. and he slobbers. @.@ I think he’s almost a year old, too…
I’ve heard it’s from being taken away from his mommy too early. Now he’s convinced I’m mommy, and he’s persistent enough that if I manually relocate him during an attempted weaning, he’ll just amble his way back and get back to work. I just let him go at it for awhile now, and then move myself when I think he’s gotten it out of his system.
My black cat did that for years, mostly going for my eyebrow unless one of my man-nips was exposed. He’s just now getting away from it although he still takes the kneading thing to extremes sometimes.
Yep, quite normal when weaned too early. My two kitties were taken from their mother at 5 weeks (not my fault), so one of them loves to knead and the other one loves to suckle. Luckily, the kneader lets the suckler suckle on her, so I don’t have to deal with that, just the kneading. It is the cutest thing to see them curled up together, suckling and kneading away, though.
If it’s really annoying, you might try seeing if you can redirect her suckling to a washcloth or stuffed animal or something like that.
Oddly enough, the kittens I have bottle raised don’t exhibit this behavior, but one of the ones who was weaned by his mother did. He finally quit the suckling, but still kneads whenever he can get close enough.
My solution was to hide the part he was prone to suck on. It involved lots of pillows to build a cat-proof fortress around my head, while still allowing me air.
the kneading is ok. we call it “making biscuits” around the house. I love it, shes cute, her nails are trimmed. it helps me go to sleep. im going to try to to get her to suckle on a wash cloth , as that sounds like a much better deal than my face
I put my suckler onto a stuffed dog I had on the bed. Now Jake isn’t content when he wants to suckle, unless the dog is in the right position, I’m in the right position and we’re all on the bed facing the right way.
If it makes you feel better, mama cat would not have put up with this indefinitely, either. She would have begun to politely but firmly remove the kitten, and/or gotten up and walked away.
With wool sucking it’s gone a bit further. Our cat, Rhiow is a wool sucker. She’ll eat cotton wool if she can get ahold of it, and we have to watch her like a hawk around fuzzy things like blankets or she’ll try to eat them. Carried that far, it’s considered a neorosis if I’m not mistaken. (We have to give her hairball stuff 2 or more times a week too.) She’s had problems before with being made sick from eating whatever it was, but she eventually managed to puke it up and got better. We were on the verge of taking her to the vet, she quit eating, and puked up even water, but in less than a day she hurked it up.
after talking to several people, I was advised by all of them to squirt them with a water pistol when getting bit if saying no and pulling her off did not work. How ever, my cat seems to enjoy this. I am perplexed.
Do they make cat pacifers?
if not, i am making one and marketing it.
Ive tried to give her a wash cloth that has been rubbed on me for a little bit for scent. It works for about 5 to 10mins before she crawls back to my chin.
If it doesn’t irritate your skin, rub your chin with some bitter apple or hot sauce. Eventually she’ll learn that your chin tastes bad, while the washcloth doesn’t.
Yes, and many cats don’t like citrus, so a little lemon juice on the suckled area might work. This behavior is comforting to the cat; reminds him of Mama. I had a cat who would knead and chew on a shirt button. When we got my current cat, Freckles, I had to start trimming the hair on my earlobes.
Get her a shaggy stuffed animal. My friend’s cat used to suckle on this old stuffed sheep dog said friend had had since she was a baby. It was the cutest damned thing.
Kneading-don’t most cats do that before they lay down? I had one that used to like to sleep in the pantry cupboard because the heating duct was right underneath it, and used to end up shreading all the napkins we had there in the process.
My current batch of cats came to me as young orphans, and I bottle fed them, so they were thus attached to me as Mom. When weaning them, I substituted petting, and the beloved of cats behind ear scritch as affection, plus, trying to act like a momcat and leading them outdoors to explore the world. This was an illuminating experience for me; I’ve had a lifetime of cats, but never had to raise the kittens as a group. We’d go outside, and they would explore, then come back to me for assurance, then head out and learn a bit more. Just like all young beings do, I suppose. None had a suckling fetish, I think, because they had a lot more to do outside.
At three now, they really like being on their own steam, cat mind more developed.They are affectionate, but not overly needy. I love them as themselves, but don’t try to baby them as humans.
To the Op: your kitty is still a baby, and is not getting her natural cat training. If she was sick, she is needing extra attention in addition to what a cat mom would give her. Give her lots of petting attention, especially mimicing cat grooming. That is: pets and scratching behind the ears, for five minutes, not just two pets and OK… This really relaxes cats, and it has a wonderful commonsense reasoning.
Cats meticulously wash themselves; you can even tell when they are embarrassed or frustrated by the fact that they will wash/lick themselves into a control mechanism frenzy.They cannot reach behind their ears easily, so when you scritch them there , they just love it. I’ve observed my tribe of natally bonded cats washing each other behind the ears as a calm down mode at the end of the day.
Try that, especially after feeding, have your kitty feel safe with full belly, and let her be close and warm, then pet her and do the behind the ears scritch and pet until she learns that the world is good and safe with you.
I don’t think the stuffed animal is a good substitute for warm attention. I’ve had the luck to see so many creatures upclose in human confines; from chimps to possums to and hamsters to parakeets to robins to hawks … basically, no one does well alone; and everyone thrives with another, oddly enough, even if it is a different species.