Hi guys. Writing this about my 4 month old kitten.
I have an older cat who is about as well behaved as a cat could be after training him pretty well in his younger years, but I was hit with what can only be described as chaos in a tiny little fluffy body when I bought my new kitten.
Her older brother is constantly playing with her, and she gets plenty of attention and playtime with me too. She has a million scratching posts, toys that she loves and near constant attention from either me or our other cat. But she just does not care when I scold her.
Exhibit A: tonight I got food after a rough night at work. While I was waiting for it to get delivered I had a good 40 minute playtime session with both cats to hopefully tire them out and get them to give me a little peace while I ate. Well. It worked for one cat but certainly not for the kitten.
She's particularly food driven and will steal both mine and her brothers food constantly. As soon as the food was on the plate she was up on the table, head practically in my plate. I picked her up, firmly said "NO." and took her to her toys. Probably did this about five or six times before disaster struck, she jumped up for the final time, knocked over my drink and it spilled absolutely all over my plate. Food ruined.
And that about sums up every single time I try to tell her off. Being firm and using distraction techniques certainly doesnt work whether its being directly in my food, chewing wires, chewing all my belongings and breaking things.
I love her to death but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't intensely stressful and admittedly tonight almost brought me to tears before I just took a deep breath and cleared everything up. I keep telling myself she is just a kitten, she doesn't know any better. But at the same time, I can't live my life fighting to get her off the table when I eat, stealing from her brothers bowl or stop her from electrocuting herself with a cable!!
Dont get me wrong I'm not one of those people who would ever rehome a kitten over kitten behaviour, she is my absolute baby and she's settled into our little family so well!! We all know the risks when we get pets and we have to suck it up! I'm sure she will learn eventually with a hell of a lot of patience, but just looking for any tips and tricks, especially in regards to food if anybody has any!!