I Bite Because…
So you’ve got a cat, and things are all swell, and then BAM, out of NOWHERE, the cat bites you. You weren’t doing anything! The cat just bit you! What the heck is wrong with it?
Hopefully I can shed (heh heh) a little light on the subject for you.
Kittens are going to bite for different reasons than adult cats. Seeing as I’m a mature (ahem) adult cat, I’m focusing on adult reasons.
I *may* have mentioned that I live with other cats. If not, consider it mentioned. And they’re super annoying. But I gotta say, for the most part, they leave me alone. How’d they learn to leave me alone? Well, see, if they happen to get super annoying near me, I just get all up in their face, and *BAPBAPBAPBAP* goes my paw on their forehead. I haven’t had to do that for, like, years now, because they learned pretty quickly I don’t like to share my sleeping spot (or toys, or food, or humans…). But in some houses, the cats might not learn after a paw bap, and that’s when the biting happens.
And I won’t lie, I’ve been known to try to bite a human or two in my time, but I’ve had good reason. You see, my tail is kinda…messed up. It was broken way before I came to live with my current humans, and it didn’t heal right, and it’s crooked. And for some weird reason, that makes humans want to touch it. Like all the time. But I am *really* sensitive about my tail, and if you try to touch it, I will try to bite you. Plus, why would you be trying to touch my tail when you should obviously be petting my head instead? I mean really.
Humans really need to pay attention to how we’re behaving when we get pet, too. Mama’s a real good example of that. She likes to be pet on her back, but oh man, if you try to touch her stomach, she’s going for you. She’s learned not to bite *too* hard, but she bites hard enough to let you know she’s not messing around. And yeah, some cats just don’t like to be touched in some spots, or they don’t like to be touched too much, and they’ll bite when it happens.
Goldie tries to bite the humans if they try to trim her claws. I mean, not like hard or anything, because hey, our humans feed us, and we’re not that dumb. Just enough to get the point across that she doesn’t want her claws trimmed (because if I’m honest, her claws are pretty epic, but don’t tell her I said that).
And sometimes the humans don’t get the point. Like at all. So you need to bite them just a little bit and then show them what you want. It’s how you get their attention when the meowing doesn’t work.
One of the cats in the house has been known to lightly bite the humans when he’s hungry, sort of a “hey, I could totally eat you if I wanted to, but instead I’m going to give you the chance to feed me appropriate food”. I guess other cats will nip and then try to get the humans to play with them, so that’s a thing, too.
Speaking of playing, if a human plays with us using their hands instead of toys, we might decide their fingers are toys, and bite those. Can you blame us? We’re predators. We eat small, wiggly things, and your fingers just happen to look like small, wiggly, tasty things. When that happens, it’s a real good idea to start playing with us using toys, not body parts.
But yeah, there are times we don’t understand that you’re *not* trying to play with us using your body parts. Like when you’re sleeping, and you move your foot. That predator thing I just talked about? Yeah, that comes into play here. So I guess sorry-not-sorry for the foot biting at 2am — we just can’t help ourselves!
So yeah! Adult cats can bite, too. But it’s because we’re trying to tell you something, and it’s not our fault you humans are too dense to understand us. Sheesh.
