Dealing With Bad Cat Behaviors
Dealing with bad cat behaviors can be very frustrating for us cat owners, especially when we put so much love into our relationship. Sometimes it seems like no matter what we do, the cat will continue with its aggressive or annoying behavior. Here are some tips have that have helped me deal with bad cat behaviors over the years.
Cat behavior is a very interesting subject and although many people claim to be experts, not all solutions will work all the time. Believe me, I have tried most of them.
One of the main things when dealing with bad behavior is to make sure you are not reinforcing the unwanted behavior whatever it is.
This is common with cat as well as dog owners. We don’t want them to continue a certain behavior but unknowingly we often reinforce the cat to repeat the act.
For example, a cat that might come and bite your toes for attention. While you may yell at your cat, the cat has accomplished its goal of getting your attention. You just reinforced this by giving your cat attention for biting your toes.
Obviously the best way to stop bad behavior is to interrupt your cat before they do the behavior. Going back to the toe biting example. Normally when a cat will try to bite your toes, they approach you in a certain way. You have to learn to recognize when your cat is about to bite your toes and immediately stop your cat.
To stop your cat you could pet it or lift the cat up and place it somewhere else. This works great because you interrupted the cat’s mental pattern.
Once you do this often enough the cat will not longer repeat that pattern. And if it does repeat the pattern, you know not to reinforce the behavior.
Dealing with bad cat behaviors does not have to be as frustrating as it seems. Find the pattern and interrupt it.
