Cat Behaviour Problems: Your cat's behaviour

Obsessions (tv, tail chasing, face rubbing, eating odd things, rolling etc):

Question: My 2 young cats (sisters) have started ripping my wallpaper off the walls. Why is this?

Answer: Usually this begins by chance when a loose piece of paper catches there attention, or sometimes, when they begin to scratch as the wooden surrounds of doorways and accidentally tear the wallpaper as they are doing so. Either way, they soon learn how much fun it can be, particularly with the heavier or cloth-like papers.

If both cats are doing this, it is an indication that they have too little to do and that there is too little stimulation in the home.

Try providing them access to outdoors if it is safe and they are old enough, or provide climbing frames, shelving or tree branches on which they can climb (make sure they are non-poisonous such as apple wood), dangling toys for them to play with in strategic places.

Try to make more of an effort to play with them yourselves too.

Once they are getting more stimulation, you will need to break the habit of tearing off the wallpaper. To do this, pull off all spare pieces of paper, place a piece of furniture in front and position a scratching post close to the wall next to the piece of furniture.

If you see them playing with the wallpaper, gently transfer them to their scratching post or climbing frame, and praise them if they begin to scratch or play.

Question: Why has my young cat, Darcy started licking plastic carrier bags. They are not wet, so I can't see that is for the moisture and I haven't noticed her drinking any more than usual.

Answer: This seems to be quite a common activity but it is, as yet, an unexplained one. There are lots of theories, such as they are ‘tasting’ the different smells that may be on the bag (they have an organ inside the roof of their mouth that allows them to ‘taste’ a scent), or they may like the feel of the bag on their tongue (cats also seem to like licking metal surfaces too), or that they may be spreading their scent on something that smells of the outside world, or it may be that it relieves anxiety in some way.

Check that there is nothing worrying her or making her agitated. If not, then I wouldn’t worry too much about it but take care to ensure that she cannot get herself trapped inside a large plastic bag.

Question: My 15-month-old kitten has started nuzzling into my hair at night. She covers her face and head in it and purrs herself to sleep as she kneads my scalp. I don't really have a problem with this, but her claws are rather sharp. However, I am concerned about why she has started doing this. Any ideas?

Answer: Cats tend to have a mother/kitten type of relationship with their owners and this explains her behaviour. She will find it very comforting to nuzzle into you and knead with her paws, just as she used to do with her mother when she was a kitten, which is why she purrs. It will make her feel warm and safe.

Rather than ask why has she started doing this, I think you should be wondering why she didn’t do it before. Was she prevented from getting into your bedroom by a closed door or anther cat? Did your dog or husband shoo her out? Or did she have an alternative warm place to sleep that she doesn’t have any more?

As a young kitten, it is even more likely that she would have enjoyed this comfort – perhaps she has only just discovered it! If you don’t mind it, it could be good for both of you.

Try to move her paws over gently so that they knead the pillow rather than your scalp. If you get the angle right, she should find this more satisfying and so should, eventually, begin to do this by herself.

Question: We have had our 7-week-old kitten for nearly two weeks. Over the last few nights, we have noticed that he is sleeping in his litter tray, even though he has his own bed. How can we stop him from doing this?

Answer: Cats like to choose a place to sleep that is safe, warm and comfortable. The positioning of the bed may be the reason for him choosing the litter tray. Is the bed in a place where he feels exposed, too near the dog or other pets, in a room where he prefers not to be for some reason?

Is the litter tray up high where he may feel safe and the bed at floor level? If the litter tray is the covered variety, it could be that he feels safer or warmer in it. Perhaps you could buy him an igloo type bed or make a cover for his out of a cardboard box.

Or it his bed in a draft? Or in a colder part of the house? Or is it further away from company (i.e. you) than the litter tray. Find out the cause by experimenting with the bed’s position and design and you should be able to find a solution.

Alternatively, it may be just a habit he has learned if he were kept in a place where there was no alternative bed. Provide two litter trays just in case so he doesn’t learn to go elsewhere and he will probably grow out of it once he realises how comfortable other beds can be.

You may like to read What is my Cat Thinking? for more information on understanding elimination.

Question: My Long haired Persian, Pebbles, is 6 years-old and came to live with us one week ago. She seems quite settled but I am not sure when I should let her outside. She does want to go outside, but I am concerned she might disappear. Also, she licks my fingers and nibbles on my nails - is this normal?

Answer: It is best to keep her in for at least 2 weeks before letting her outside to make sure she is used to the house and regards it as a safe home she can return to. If she is new to you, it may be best to keep her in for one month.

This may seem like a long time, but it takes quite a long time for cats to bond properly with new owners, even if they are Persians. Before that, you could take her out on a harness and lead if she will accept one easily. Before letting her wander off on her own, go out with her and supervise some visits to the garden, making sure she is hungry and calling her back in for food.

When she finally goes out alone, withhold food for 12 hours and call her back in after half an hour and feed her.

The finger licking and nail nibbling is not abnormal, but make sure she is physically healthy and is eating a well-balanced diet. It could be an attention-seeking behaviour. If you don’t like it, try not give her attention when she does it, ignoring her completely instead.

When she stops, wait a few seconds and then make a fuss of her.

Question: Itchy is a 5-month-old female kitten, due to be neutered in a couple of days. She is very bright and playful and loves to be stroked and petted. The problem is that she likes to bite and chew things including my fingers and paper she's even taken small chunks out of an ornament. Why does she do this and is there any way of stopping it? Please help, I wouldn't want her to damage her teeth on my ornaments.

Answer: It is probably a combination of play and investigatory behaviour. Once she is neutered, she will be able to go outside to explore which should help. Until then, play with her as often as possible with toys on the end of wands that she can chase, catch and bite, and try to provide her with a more varied environment with new things each day to explore.

You don’t say whether this happens at food time. If so, it could be a distortion of normal feeding behaviour. This sometimes happens with hand-reared kittens, and some cats like to bite on material and other strange objects while they are eating. If this is so, I would suggest that you contact a member of the The Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors for further advice before it becomes a bad habit.

Question: My cat Tinkerbell is 13 years old and, much as I love her, she is exceptionally whiney.

She is always seeking attention and follows me around the house meowing. It doesn't matter whether you play with her for five minutes or five hours, she simply demands more. This is not a new problem, she was like this when I adopted her but I thought it was due to lack of attention.

She will happily lounge in front of the fire or behind the sofa and appear quite comfortable and content, but all the while in the background she will be meowing. Often it is not loud but it is pretty much constant and I find it irritating and distracting. Please help!

Answer: It is difficult to give advice as I don’t know how long you have had her or what happened to her before. If she has not been with you for long, and suffered a particularly traumatic experience recently, e.g. the death of the person she had spent the previous 13 years with followed by a stay at a rescue home, it would not be surprising that she would need constant reassurance that you are still there.

If this is the case, she may just need more time to settle in and feel reassured that you are not going to leave her too. I would advise you to give her attention only when you decide to and not to respond to the noises she makes at all.

This may not have much effect on the problem in the short term if it is driven by a constant anxiety that you may have left, but, at least you won’t be adding to the problem by reinforcing the behaviour. If she has always been an attention-seeking cat, and the previous owner has encouraged this behaviour, it should begin to stop once she realises that you are not paying attention to her and she is not getting rewarded for doing it.

Give yourself some ‘time out’ if you are getting irritated by shutting her in another room for a short time.

Not only will this help you to feel better, but it will help her to learn to cope with being by herself too.

Question: I have an eight month-old male Maine coon, who is wonderful. He's great fun and great company, however, for the last two months he's taken great delight in splashing his water from his bowl all over the kitchen, easily emptying it within minutes. This is starting to cause distress, as we don't mind him playing with water (we keep an old litter tray in the garden for him to play with water in), but it is dangerous for puddles of water to be left in the kitchen and it means Charley could be left without water for a few hours. How do I stop him splashing his water around without putting him off drinking it?

Answer: As you know, Maine Coons have lots of energy and it is not unusual for them to find there own sources of amusement which are not always acceptable to the owners. You could buy a chick-drinker from an agricultural merchants.

These have a small area of standing water which is fed by a larger reservoir of water inside (this prevents little chicks from drowning in a large bowl of water). If the standing water trough is small enough only for a tongue and not for a paw, this could solve the problem.

Alternatively, put water into a large, deep-sided dish. If it is large enough, it will require only a small depth of water and if the sides are high enough, he should have too much difficulty getting it out for it to be fun.

Or you could place the bowl up on a ledge in such a way that he can drink from it, but not play in it.

Since he obviously has more energy than he knows what to do with, it would also be a good idea to try to give him more things to do such as ropes and branches to climb, hanging toys to play with, food balls to push about.

It would also be a good idea to try to play more games with him whenever you have a few minutes to spare.

Question: Why has my nine year old siamese started to lick the rocks and cement and chew pebbles around the garden. He has no teeth.

Answer: If this problem has only just begun, it is likely that there may be an underlying medical condition and you should get him checked out by your veterinary surgeon.

Pica (the eating on non-food items)is quite common in the oriental breeds, but usually they go for wool, clothing and objects that are softer than rocks and cement.

Another explanation could be that Cocoa has somehow learnt that by doing this he gets your attention. This is particularly likely if you react every time you see him doing it.

Attention-seeking behaviour can be reversed by consistently ignoring it, but do get him to the vet first to check nothing is wrong with him physically.

Question: When my cat sits on my lap, and I start talking (on the phone or to someone in the room) she will often act oddly by meowing and approaching my face.

If I continue to talk she will try to bite my face, slowly but not aggressively, and I have to hold her back as I am not sure what she will do to me! What is it all about?

Answer: It is probably an attention-seeking behaviour – it sounds as if it works very nicely for her.

Attention-seeking behaviour is common in cats that have a high need for social contact, e.g. those that have been socialised well with people, hand-reared cats or some of the more demanding pure-bred cats. They quickly learn that certain behaviours work better than others to get attention back on to themselves when they feel they are being neglected.

To stop it, you will need to make sure that behaviour does not work anymore. Ignore her completely, or if this is impossible, stand up so that she falls off your lap. Give her plenty of attention at other time, but give most of it on your terms rather than on yours.

In this way, she will learn not to demand your attention at inconvenient times.

Question: I have two, 7-month-old kittens, they are sisters. Why does one knead my arm and suck and lick the fabric of my clothes whilst the other chews my clothes line?

Answer: Some cats seem to carry infant behaviours into adulthood more than others. Sucking human arms and necks is an extension of their normal sucking behaviour to get milk from their mother. Since we act like psueduo-parent, providing food and stroking them in a way that is similar to being groomed by the mother’s tongue, we encourage kitten-like behaviour even when they are mature.

Some kittens stay like this, while others grow up. With litter sisters, there is usually one who is more mature, bold and outgoing. Licking fabric and chewing items that are not food can either exploratory, play or sometimes linked to the fact that we feed them soft food that does not need much chewing.

Like dogs, they carry with them the desires and ability to chew through skin and sinew to get their food and some cats seem to enjoy chewing on hard items. Unless they are ingesting when they chew or lick, this seems to be quite a harmless occupation.

Question: Simba is a well-tempered cat, he's a cross between an Aby & a Tabby (neutered). Recently we moved to a larger house where he has become more and more obsessed with chewing paper, shoes and anything he can get his teeth into. He even started helping us strip the wallpaper! Why does he do this and how can I stop him without telling him off?

Answer: Some cats have a tendency to chew or eat things that aren’t food. This tendency can often by triggered by stress, and the move to a new house could have brought out this trait. No one really knows why they do this, although there are lots of theories. And it is difficult to stop them once they have started. Try mixing some gristly meat that needs to be chewed into their dinner, rather than just providing soft tinned meat that is easily swallowed, to see if this helps.

Has he stopped going outside as much since you moved? If so, he could be trying to use up his energy inside the house because he is too worried to go outside.

If this is the case, help him to start establishing his territory by going outside with him to give him some moral support. It will also help to play with him more in the house to use up his energy. Be inventive about the games so that he is always coming across new things to play with.

Provide a good scratching post so that he has something to sharpen his claws on without needing to go outside or scratch at the wallpaper (place this near to the torn wallpaper so that he get the idea).

Alternatively, the change in his behaviour may be due to the stress of moving, and, if this is the case, you will need to provide him with plenty of reassurance and consistency for a while to help him get through this difficult time.

Question: I just got a cat from a shelter and I was relaxing with her on the bed when she started sucking the inside of her left rear leg.

She kept doing this for about 15 minutes. Licking, sucking, and occasionally tugging the fur while kneading the bed, her lower leg, or tail... Do you know what this means?

(I was told by the shelter that she had kittens and the shelter found a home for the kittens. Her estimated age is about one year old.)

Answer: This is normal behaviour for some cats and nothing to worry about providing she does not pull out her fur or make the skin red or sore when she does it. She is replicating the behaviour she used when suckling milk from her mother. Kneading with the paws would have helped to stimulate the flow of milk.

Some cats, particularly those that we weaned early, seems to continue this behaviour into adulthood, usually at times when they feel relaxed, comfortable and sleepy.

Sometimes cats will learn to suck the necks of their human caretakers, but your cat seems to have found her own self-sufficient way of relaxing herself. If you are worried that she may be damaging her skin, try to transfer the behaviour onto an old, soft toy or anything else that she finds acceptable.

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