I’ve also found that this works well with my eight month old kittens (who were neutered two months ago). Plus it has the added advantage over a water bottle that you don’t run the risk of getting things wet unintentionally.
time out works as well. i am no longer able to use a time out room for my little guys, but a laundry basket works well.
i have a large plastic laundry basket, lots of air holes. i turn the basket over on top of the “offender”. he soon settles down and i take the basket off after a minute or two.
one cat is rather food aggressive with treats and nummy food, so i get the time out basket so he can eat his yummy without attacking the yummies of the other 2.
the good thing with the time out basket is that i don’t forget him. when i had a time out room sometimes i would forget he was in there. he can move around and move the basket with him, which has the added bonus of entertainment!
another vote for the compressed air. i would just have it out on the table and they would stay 4 on the floor until the can disappeared.
I’m saying this as a cat lover:
BEAT THE EVER-LOVING CRAP OUT OF HIM! NOW!
The only way to train a cat to not do something is to make the immediate, unchanging direct effect something it really doesn’t like - make the beating severe enough that there is no chance that it is mistaken for a game. Make it immediate and constant - I don’t care how sick or weak you are - hunt the bastard down a beat it. really. If you are too sick to hunt it down, don’t let it in the same room with you.
Having an adult cat thinking that drawing human blood is tolerable is NOT tolerable. This should have been stopped when it was a kitten (yes, I have demonstrated the human-is-bigger-and-stronger-than-you rule to small kittens - the first time they try to bite should be the LAST time).
Oh yes - never call an animal to punish it. Unless you don’t want it to come when called.
Um, no. Cats don’t respond to physical violence that way. You need to wear it out with play, get another cat, get it fixed, or any combination of the above. If you can’t have a pet without beating the shit out of it you shouldn’t have a pet. The closest I ever came to assaulting someone was the asshat at work a few years ago who was bragging about how if his dog barks when he tells it not to he doesn’t feed it that day. You know, because starvation is an appropriate or even understandable punishment to an animal.:mad:
Worst. Advice. Ever.
Please, if you have cats, give them away to someone who actually understands them.
Don’t shoot it at the cat! If the liquid gets into the tube, it could get onto the cat’s skin or face.
Yeah, I could never hurt the little guy (aside from accidently stepping on his tail when he tries to weave in and out under my feet whenever I walk within a 5-foot radius of the cat food stash). He’s way too cute.
And I think I’ll try the squirt gun over the compressed air - not just for the reason offered by DeadlyAccurate, but because that stuff costs a hell of a lot more than tap water.
Ugh. I feel sick :mad:
I just wonder why he’s assuming that I’m sick and/or weak. 
I’m not. But when you ARE too sick.
Yes, I respond to cat force (just what do you call biting/clawing?) with human force. This should never happen - a kitten will attempt to bite - that’s what kittens do. THAT is when to smack them - the cat in question is too close to adulthood to allow aggression to continue - grab it by the neck, smack it down with your foreame pinning its butt, and smack its hind quarters - the head is too fragile for force.
Cats fight by using their rear legs to eviscerate the enemy - if it tries to flip onto its back and engage its rear legs on any part of you - well, that is another one of those lessons which must be learned immediately.
and, for the record - I have raised a couple of litters over the years (purebreds, so don’t give me crap about irresponsible breeding) - I produced sweet, loving, docile cats - the lessons were learned around the time they were weaned - force was never enough to harm them, and rarely used more than once or twice per kitten.
The situation here is one where not only does the “don’t bite/scratch” lesson need to be taught, the “draw blood at will” lesson needs to be un-taught. MUCH more difficult.
The squirt-gun bit is appropriate for “don’t-scratch-furniture” bit.
Attacking human is about who is alpha - it wants to use force to demonstrate dominance? Unfortunate, but we humans can also use force.
p.s. - a cat grabbed by both scruff of neck and base of tail (with a bit of tension) cannot harm you.
I’ve got to chime in on the getting him fixed, Neutron Star. We have one male cat out of our three, and he was a terror before we got him fixed. He was used to being an outside cat (former dirtbag owners abandoned him) and he went after our two female cats for some nookie all of the time. He had them so fearful that poor Banshee hid in a paper bag and wouldn’t come out of it. My wife had to spoon feed her. She was so scared of Jet Jaguar she wouldn’t eat. 'Stache was frightened of him too, but she at least would stand up for herself and fight him.
Still, his spraying was intolerable. His howling was also. No one had any peace. (I was kind of lucky…I was deployed for a short time and the wife had to deal with him) Since he was fixed he’s calmed considerably. He’s actually a very cuddly and friendly cat now. He likes to poke you with a paw when he wants attention.
Now that we’ve moved and his favorite cat tree hasn’t been delivered yet with the rest of our furniture he’s developed the habit of climbing on top of the fridge, but to do so he leaps on the washer next to it. Going up or down it makes a loud bang which has to stop.* (hilariously the wife and I were watching a DVD of “A Haunting” series and just when a scary part happened he leapt on the washer making the loud bang, causing us both to jump out of our seats)*. We use a spray bottle to keep him off of it, now and it helps. He still does it if he knows we aren’t in the room, but he knows he’s not supposed to and I think a few more squirts will drive that out of him. I got another temp cat tree for him to help him also. (Jet isn’t comfortable unless he can sleep somewhere high)
Get your cat fixed. It will make both of you happier.
You’re not serious are you? Cats don’t respond to physical violence like that. The only thing that will do is make the cat afraid of you. I don’t think dogs would respond to a beating well either. What you just posted sounds like animal cruelty.
I suggest that if you need to beat the crap out of your pets you probably shouldn’t have pets.
Sorry, I realize this is going to sound like I’m junior modding here but this always bugs me; one thing I’ve noticed about the Dope is that just about any animal related thread, especially about cats, will attract a certain type of poster who claims to love animals but then advocates something shocking which amounts to cruelty. There is a word for this which I am not allowed to use outside of a certain forum. So let’s just ignore it and not give it any more attention.
There is always the option of reporting the posts to a moderator or taking the discussion to another forum.
neutron star: Re: Neutering. If you’ve been putting it off for financial reasons call around to some of the local shelters and ask if they have any programs to help out with neutering cats. Sometimes they will have vets they work with to offer a low cost neuter option and sometimes they will have spay/neuter days.
usedtobe, that method will only teach the cat to fear you, and it totally inappropriate and will probably end up causing more harm (bad habits ) down the road with a fearful cat. You may be confusing the whole alpha thing with dogs - cats aren’t wired the same way; as in they don’t view humans as part of their pack to do the whole dominance thing with. I feel sorry for any cats you may own. 
Neutron, get him fixed ASAP and use a squirt gun and hiss at him, or put him in a room alone for a little while when he attacks you. I’ve had cats my entire life and the only aggressive kitten I had grew out of it - he was fixed and I used a squirt gun/time out method with him.
Sorry I’m a little late with this, but get him neutered.
I fourth (or fifth, or whatever) the canned air. I’ve never had to squirt it AT my cats, just the hissing sound was enough (and more effective than me hissing at them – they’d just kind of stare at me like I was crazy when I did). After about three or four times of that, just seeing me holding the can was enough, and at this point they don’t even need to see it; the “clink” sound of me picking it up is enough to send them running. 
An 8-month old cat is still a kitten – the spraying indicates that he’s hit puberty, but he’s no more an adult than a 14-year-old boy is. He’s still growing, and now he’s hormonal to boot. Most cats I’ve known retain their frenetic kitten-energy until they’re at least 2 years old, and a lot of them for longer. One of my cats still goes nuts for brief periods of time, once or twice a day, and he’s around 6.
And most humane societies will be able to direct you to a low-cost spay/neuter program. My first boy came to me already fixed, but my second was a kitten, and I got him done for I think around $25.
Serious question: is the whole “guys get squirmy over the thought of neutering their pet” thing hyperbole or what? When I had a female cat, I had no emotional drama over getting her spayed, and no female in my family was wailing about how removing her uterus would make her “less of a woman.” I’m just kinda “whuh?” about hearing about some guy freaking out “OMG! Can’t cut off his BALLS!!” It seems to me like some sort of macho posturing thing, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what purpose it’s supposed to serve.
If it seriously makes [you/guys/some guys] angsty, why? I can’t relate at all.
How did I not know about these! I can’t tell you how often I’ve wished for some way to “booby trap” the counters for just this reason. Both boys know perfectly well they’re not supposed to be on the table or counters, but they both also know they won’t get yelled at for it if I’m asleep. Argh.
Now I really wish I weren’t broke.
Yikes. Here I was all set to share a lurid, profoundly unhelpful and highly inappropriate cat attack-related training anecdote in this thread, then decided to put it off til later. Never have I been quite so thankful for my deeply ingrained procrastination reflex.
Look on the bright side. If it turns out that the cat can’t be liberated from its instinctive bloodlust, you will at least have an endless series of entertaining (to other people) cat stories to tell. The sad truth is that nobody wants to hear about punctiliously well-behaved cats. Cats have two highly evolved, closely interrelated behavior modes: displays of ostentatious cuteness and wholly disproportionate acts of violence and mayhem. The first mode prevents the cat from being removed from the gene pool on account of the second mode. It’s really a beautifully counterbalanced evolutionary dynamic. Years from now, your family will still reminisce fondly about how the cat eventually learned to defy gravity entirely, dropping down from the ceiling to latch onto the faces of its screaming victims.
At this point, it’s mostly procrastination. It’s only $25 at the local Humane Society, twice a week. My mom has a cat about two months younger than him. I’m going to get ahold of her and see if we can just take both of them on one day.
When I was a teen, we had a beautiful Himalayan Siamese. Named Matilda, until it was noted, she had balls. We beat the living crap outta each other! Neither of us held back much. I was the one he slept with, would eat food from my hand, and come to when called by name. He would stalk me at night, grab hold, and go for “flying lessons”. I never “beat” him maliciously or with the intent of really hurting him. It was extreme roughhousing. One of his favorite tricks was to get a running start, climb me like a tree, jump over my head, and climb down the other side. If I caught him, I won. He usually won though. No one else in the house got the treatment from him. Nor did they but rarely get approached for quiet lap time. Mother could not give him tuna by hand, he turned his nose up at it. We all think he died of loneliness about a month after I moved away.