Dr. Lera Clone shows how to stop kittens from biting fingers using a four-month-old named Lila. Never play with your fingers or toes; redirect to toys instead. Interrupt biting with loud noises like a coin-filled soda can, or a water spray. Feliway pheromone spray works for about half of cats.
Four months old.
About 50% of cats.
November 25, 2019.
Dr. Lera Clone, Heron Lakes Animal Hospital.
Hey, guys. My name is Dr. Lara here at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital. Today I'm here with Lila. Lila is a four month old kitten and mom's bringing her in today because she's got this little skin acne or chin acne going on. And so she wants us to go ahead and take care of that. Now, the other thing that I noticed during the conversation, the video for today is going to be talking more about behavioral modification and trying to prevent behavioral issues. So with kittens, it is very important that you do not play with your fingers. Because what will happen is when you play with their fingers, they're not going to know when they chomp down that it's too hard. And so usually what I tell people is don't play with your fingers, don't play with your toes. Because what may happen is you may be sitting on the couch or eating dinner at the kitchen counter and you'll have your toes out and about and then all of a sudden you'll feel this jolt of pain because they pounced on your digits and they went ahead and chomped on it. And that's because nobody told them that that wasn't okay. Now, some of the different things that I talked to mom about was to go ahead and distract her or kind of interrupt her pattern is going ahead and using either a soda can filled with either some sort of beans or coins, just because it's going to be kind of jarring how loud and obnoxious the sound is. You could potentially use an air canister, which again is just something to go ahead, not to shoot in the face, but more to go ahead and hit them on the side. Probably that will go ahead and that will go ahead and definitely distract them or interrupt their pattern. They. The other thing that some people might do is maybe use like a water bottle where you have it on the spray, not the jet. And that way it's something that just goes ahead and again interrupts their pattern. The other thing that I tell people is do not go ahead and play. Instead of playing with your fingers, play with like a pen or a stick or some sort of string or something like that. Now, the one thing that I do want you to be aware of is when you are playing with strings, string play should be supervised. And the reason it should be supervised is because cats are notorious for swallowing strings. And those strings can then end up becoming surgical. Because what will happen is that string will get embedded into the intestine and then that string has to be cut out and multiple cuts have to be made into the intestine to go ahead and remove it and unstick it from those different parts of the intestines. It is very important that you go ahead and you set those limits and those boundaries for little kittens like Lila. That way they know what's okay and what's not okay. If they do go ahead. What Lila was doing with mom is she would either get ramped up and she would go ahead and, like, wrap her hands around mom and start biting on her wrists. And what I told mom was, you need to pay attention to when she's starting to get agitated. They may start growling a little bit, they may start to put the paw up. And as soon as they do that, it, you know, you need to stop whatever behavior it is you're doing, because it's not only their fault, but then it becomes your fault because you just kind of create the situation. Okay. Other than that, you know, one of the things that you could potentially do, if you are having cats that are having difficulty and they are not going ahead and seeming to be totally cool or calm, you could look into something called feel away. Feel away is a feline pheromone, which is like an odorless pheromone, and it's from a lactating queen, which is a female cat, and that's supposed to be soothing. That works in about 50% of cats. And so that's also just the same statistics as catnip. So if you guys have any questions about this particular topic, leave it in the comment box. And if you found this video helpful, give us a thumbs up. Subscribe and share. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
