You Get What You Teach

This is Nirvana. Or, as I have nicknamed him since he arrived, P.K. What does P.K. stand for you ask? It stands for Psycho Kitty.

Since he arrived he has been annoying and hyper. He does not play nicely with the other kittens. He is too rough with them and his play bites are too hard. The other kittens will cry out and try to get away from him when he gets too rough but he just chases them down until I pick him up and move him away from them. He is staying in my room right now because I can not put him in my "foster room" with the mother cat, her kitten and our other visitor Dora. I can't do this because Muffin, the mom cat, can't stand him. He kept jumping and biting her tail and swatting at her until she finally ended up pinning him to the ground with his neck in her mouth to stop him. This is a common thing for mother cats to do to kittens to teach them that they are getting too rough and need to stop. They are not actually hurting the kitten. It is how they learn to have manners around other cats. If the kitten does not respond the mother will get more and more rough until the kitten is pinned and can not move. This is what Muffin was doing to P.K. Even then he did not get the hint and I had to separate him from her so she would not accidentally hurt him.

That is not the worst of it. He is the same way with people. He bites, he scratches and in general just acts like the psycho kitty that I have nicknamed him. He chases anything that moves - hands, feet, hair, computer cursors. Even as I type this he is chasing and trying to bite my fingers.

Then why, you might ask, am I willing to foster him? Well, for one thing, it is only for a few days while he gains a few ounces. But the real answer is - it is not his fault. Kittens are not naturally like this. They do all bite and scratch and pounce on things that move while they learn their "hunting" skills, but they do not usually bite or scratch hard enough to really hurt.

The behavior that he is showing right now is learned behavior most likely caused by the person who turned him in to the shelter. He either has had no social interaction with people and does not know how to interact with people or this was how he was taught to play.

I do not think he has had no socialization because when he is calm he is very sweet and loving and he always wants to be with the people in the house. If he is separated from me for any length of time he cries until I come back. And he is learning that I do not like him to be rough. He is not a malicious or mean animal, he just wants to play. I think that the problem is that he was taught to play rough. People think that is is funny or cute when their tiny few week old kitten attacks their hand and wrestles with them or jumps on their back. They do not think about how annoying that behavior will be when the kittens is 2 months old and has stronger, sharper teeth and claws that actually hurt when he plays how he was taught. Just like people like to cuddle puppies in their laps and then don't understand why they can't keep their full grown heavy dog off of them.

Don't get me wrong, I know how hard it is to keep this sort of stuff in mind when dealing with a baby. I have had to work hard in the last two weeks to wean Doyle off of cuddling up on my chest like he is used to from when I had to help feed him. I still want to cuddle him next to me because he is so soft and sweet and nothing feels nicer than snuggling with a kitten. However, I also do not want to stick someone with a cat that keeps trying to climb on their chest. I guess what I am saying is before you teach your baby animal to act a certain way, be sure that you still want them to act that way when they are a larger full grown adult.

As for P.K., I will put up with him. Since it is late at night, he has gotten tired and in the amount of time it has taken me to write this post, he has given up his rough "playing" and curled up to sleep on the corner of my bed. I do not know what his story was before arriving at the shelter, but I am willing to bet that his previous owner taught him to be this rough when he was younger (probably unknowingly) and when he got older and was too hard to handle, dumped him off in the shelter for someone else to deal with the problem.

Of course, I could be wrong. His previous owners could have loved him to death and liked that he is so crazy and are heartbroken that they had to give him up. I will never really know. All I know if that he will have a harder time finding a home the way he is right now. So, for as long as I have him, I will continue to try to unteach him what he has learned and instead teach him to play gently and lovingly all the while trying to ignore the scratches covering my hands and feet. I see a lot of Neosporin in my future but giving P.K. a better chance at finding a home is worth it.