He will not stop meowing even when he is playing. The only time he stops is sometimes when he sees me. Is this normal?
Sometimes he hisses at me to keep me away and other times he lets me pet him, pick him up and play. Is there a way I can stop the hissing?
I am sorry for going on and on about my cat but I haven’t had one in so long and I have forgotten what it is like to have a kitten.
Thanks!
Bailey’s Mom
Normal kitty behavior. Some kitties are talkative.
And sometimes cats just don’t want to be bothered. The hissing is Bailey’s way of saying, “Aw, leave me alone, Mommy!”
Normal, normal, normal.
Remember, he is only seven weeks old - still a baby. What he is doing is normal stuff baby kittens do with their littermates. Give him time to adjust to having a ‘human’ littermate istead of other kittens. He might not have had very much interaction with people yet.
Kittens are very vocal. They meow when they need something, like food, or your company. He may also be play acting. The little critter will grow out of it. Think of the kitten as a baby or a toddler . . . how many times do we hear kids making all kinds of noises and talking to themselves when they are playing in other room?
I have an adult male that used to pounce on a toy, and carry it around the house and occassionally drop it and meow. This is a form of play acting: the cat is imitating the “prey” crying out in pain.
The hissing is his way of trying to establish himself as the dominate male in the household, over you, believe it or not (and it doesnt matter what gender you are). He may also arch his back at you to challenge you. Just yell “no!” a few times when he misbehaves (like goes after your food, tears apart something) to startle him. Over time, he will defer to you as the boss.
If he bites or claws at you when he is hissing, that is the REAL time to establish your dominance. While I’m sure a loud “no!” will work, I gave my kitten a little whack on the side when he tried to pull shit with me, and we have a great relationship. He’s now 4 and he is my buddy . . and when I say “NO!” he knocks off whatever it is that I’m objecting to!
Rofl. That’s one of the funniest thing I’ve ever read.
Since he’s so little, this is the perfect chance to teach him that you’re going to do things he doesn’t like, and he’s going to put up with it. Handle his feet, and open his mouth, and put your fingers in his ears. When he hisses, scruff him, gently tap him on the nose, and keep on with what you were doing. Be persistent, and he’ll eventually catch on. Trust me, this will save you all kinds of time and trouble later, when his nails need trimmed or he has to go to the vet. I’d also pick him up sometimes when he’s hissing anyway, and hold him till he quits struggling, then put him down.
The meowing seems pretty normal. Some cats, especially kittens are very talkative. He’ll probably grow out of some of it, but he may always be a talker.
It seems that Bailey has me a little whupped.
I went up to the local convience store (5 min walk there, 5 minutes in the store and then 5 back). I left him wailing. I came back and it looked like he was just waking up from his nap. He hissed at me twice and then when I sat down he came and cuddled.
I am going to my pastor’s house for dinner (maybe 2 hours) and he is just going to have to deal with it. I will bring him something back and then lavish him with attention but the CrazyCatLady is exactly right. He is going to have to realize I am going to do things he doesn’t like.
Sounds like your fuzzy also thinks of hissing as a perfectly good vocalization, whereas the late Snowball would looked ashamed of himself if he hissed. It was as if he’d said a “dirty word” in front of a refined crowd.
One of my present cats, on the other hand, thinks hissing is perfectly acceptable for play time (though it’s a whispery and not as emphatic as a genuine angry hiss).
Though I agree with Anger that it sound kinda like he’s telling you off to test you’re authority (stuck in perpetual adolescence, be warned.)
They do this in a playful context too though. We call it Pepe Le Pewing. With back arched, kitty bounces at you sideways.
Once we recover from laughing at the ridiculousness of the challenge, we start playing with the “fighting toy”.
Note: Do NOT encourage biting in play. Sometimes kitties can get overzealous with guests and can bite a visitor thinking it’s “combat play” while visitor thinks “vicious.”
We’ve got Fatcat trained so that “playfighting” with the human is only allowed when the human brings out the Big Yellow Mittens. No other combat/biting play is allowed.
Sometimes Fatcat will bring out the Big Yellow Mittens on his own, pounce on them, then look at you like “wanna fight?”
I disagree, cats are not hierarchical like dogs. You cannot establish a pecking order with a cat any more than you can herd them. Cats are territorial, and if you don’t fix a male cat you will sense his pressence pretty quickly.
The hissing can always be defined as “I’m pissed”. You have to figure out what they’re pissed about. “your in my chair”, “you left me alone”, “you won’t leave me alone”, “I don’t want to be handled”, “my litter box is full”, “I don’t like the new cat”, etc…
A kick in the freckle will quieten it down.
Actually cats do establish dominance and are big on territory. That is why it is dangerous to have two male unneutered cats. They will kill each other to establish who is in charge.
He is sleeping very peacefully right now. You would never guess that he is actually a little terror when awake.
It warms my heart when he snuggles up to me to get petted and go to sleep. awww…
I love the little bugger.
Um, that’s not accurate at all. Cats do have fairly complex social structures and most definitely do have a pecking order. From lion prides down on to domestic barnyard cats.
It’s very easily observed it in a multi-cat household. And it’s not just an issue of territory either.
Here, this is a vet’s website that describes the hierarchal cat social structure.
I think he is bi-polar 
Nah, he is a normal little kitty. He has been introduced into a new environment and is trying to “make you mind him” instead of the other way around. Be glad you didn’t get a dog or it would be humping your leg right now 
Obviously Fatcat knows what is acceptable. I’d certainly reward him with a bit of playtime when he brought out the Big Yellow Mittens. My little Siamese will sometimes ask us to play with her by standing near the mouse-onna-string hanging in the hall doorway. While she can play with it on her own, she vastly prefers to have her humans use it to play with her. She also lets me know that she’s cold by sitting near my space heater and hollering if it’s off. She’s trained my husband to cover her up with a sheet or blanket when she scratches at it.
Cats are lots of fun, and each one has its own vocabulary of gestures.
I disagree. A pride is not a pecking order, it consists of a breeding male (dominant) and multiple female cats that DO NOT have a pecking order.
http://www.studyworksonline.com/cda/content/article/0,,NAV4-42_SAR1373,00.shtml
And I’ve never witnessed a pecking order in cats. I often seen dominant cats, but never a top-down pecking order like you see in dogs. My experience is anecdotal, but the first cat usually has an edge in being the dominant one if there is a date-range involved. I wish I could remember the name of the PBS program on cats. It should female cats working together to hide their kittens from invading males (who kill them to ensure mating).
We may be arguing semantics because I would define “pecking order” as linear (each animal subordinate to another in succession). In a 2-cat family, there is a pecking order of sorts in that there is often a dominant cat.
I was rather surprised that my older cat did not maintain dominance with the introduction of a kitten (both females). They fought tooth-and-nail for a month until a truce was reached. The older one was the aggressor but the younger one wasn’t taking any crap, despite her more docile qualities.
Eats_Crayons - I did look at your website and I think it describes what I was talking about. 1 dominant cat, not a succession like dogs.
BTW, the floating index on that website reminded me of “eye” floaters. Very annoying.
Even in prides of lions, there is an alpha female. One that is reverenced as “the queen” if you will. The male lions eat first, but when the females eat the queen always goes first, followed by the older females,and finally the younger females. I would think it is more like a caste system myself.
Every being in the world has a pecking order. If you don’t believe me, get a fish tank.
Well, I think we are using the word “pecking order” differently. Lion prides can have queens but they don’t have a princess and a dutches. If you look at a pack of dogs you can number them from top to bottom in a pecking order.
Yah, fish are brutal. I once knew a guy who tried to pet a piranha. You just can’t believe how much blood can squirt out of a finger.
I think we are drifting from the intent of the post. We are all in agreement that the behavior of the cat in question is normal. I think we would also agree that cats do not recognize a person as an alpha cat. They don’t respond in a submissive manner like dogs do.
Dog: I missed you, I missed you I missed you. Hi Hi Hi. Thank you for the food. I can’t believe you are petting me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Cat: where the hell have you been, fill my dish, then you will be allowed to pet me, and if you do it right I will purr to acknowledge your achievement in this most basic of skills.
There often is a succession, a clear one. We’ve seen it when we temporarily had four cats. And you could number them: OldCat, FatCat, SkinnyCat, VisitorCat. But cat hierarchies can be more fluid, particularly in the tough-to-define mid-ranges.
Eg/ Fat and Skinny would switch places in the heirarchy, and they were the two that would have skirmishes. Visitor was resigned to his fate of lowest on the totem pole, Old was secure in his position as boss-cat.
It’s most obviously seen at feeding time, in the order that they feed and defer to each other - more “important” cats eat first. It’s interesting to watch in my neighbours six cat household. Four of them squabble over the pecking order.
The way in which they socialize is not as clear and apparent to humans as the dog heirarchy, because the “division of space” is more complex and there are more subtleties of beaviour in the way the heirarchy is expressed.
There was a fantastic documentary on TV that compared a lion pride to a barnyard kitty commune - brilliant. It was entirely about the feline social structure. It was especially interesting when babies were born and their whole society did a weird flip-flop was altered by protective mamas.
Og, I hate those menus too.