One of our siamese attack kittens has developed a case of attention whoring. He is a long and lanky male applehead. Our female is short and stout, and out weights him by 5 pounds.
Lately everytime she comes up to my wife or myself and wants some attention our male cat runs up and boots her out of the way… Nearly every time. What do we do with this negative behaviour? I heard cats do not respond to negative feed back so yelling at him is out. I was thinking about resurrecting the water gun…
Cats do respond to negative feedback. It just needs to be more consistent than that applied to more malleable dogs. The challenge, as indcated by the calls for pix, is that most cat-owning humans have weaker psychological stamina than their cat. Sorta like trying to use hot butter to cut through a knife.
Be assured that if the male cat is immediately provided negative feedback every time he behaves in an undesirable fashion, he will change behaviors eventually. But it must be a) immediate; b) negative from his point of view, not necessarily from yours; and c) 100% consistent for as long as it takes, which may be months.
I’ve had several cats who exhibited this behaviour, and my experience has been that trying to interfere in cat politics doesn’t work. If you spritz him for trying to hog your attention, he’s liable to respond in ways you like even less, such as jumping on the female and biting her for no discernable reason, or suddenly deciding to go outside the litterbox, or just sulkily avoiding you. Whatever you do, accept that you will never get it through kitty’s mind that this is his fault. Most cats have no concept of guilt. He will simply think you’re crazy.
I had a cat who was like that for a while. He was clearly insecure. I think responding to his bids for attention by chasing him away will turn him neurotic. I gave my insecure fella extra pats and, when he wanted to be petted when the girl was, I petted them both. I would not let him chase her away, but I made sure he didn’t see what he may, in his tiny kitty brain, think was ‘unfair’ favouring of her over him.
I also went with this approach for my two cats and the one dog. Give attention to everyone you have a free hand for but don’t allow one animal to push another away. In general I find it not worth getting into the minutiae of animal hierarchies - they will sort themselves out regardless.
Your problem is that you have Siamese cats. Meezers are natural attention whores. It’s just part of their personality. A Meezer will do anything in the loudest, most dramatic way possible. Pet the male, but pet the female at the same time. Try to work in some extra cuddling for the male. My Siamese girl was very needy about hugs when I first adopted her from the Humane Society. Once she learned that she could get attention any time she wanted it, and was liable to be scooped up and hugged even if she didn’t ask for it, she calmed down a bit. She’s still a slutty kitty, though.
I agree Lynn. It appears to be in their genes. This morning the female was sitting on our bed all warm and cozy…the male snuck up behind her…meaning right under her nose cuz she couldn’t see him behind the laundry basket…and pounced on her. This was a Oh’Dark’Thirty this morning. She looked like aporcupine she was soo puffed 1
She looked like aporcupine she was soo puffed 1
