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AIBU?

The fucking kitten has my legs in shreds..

83 replies

WankingMonkey · 11/04/2017 00:10

A girl who lives near us recently 'adopted' a cat. I say 'adopted' because the previous owners moved house and just left her in the shed and she seemed ill and didn't seem to leave the shed for any reason and neighbour was feeding her as obviously noone else would. She phoned the RSPCA who suggested she take the cat in. She did. Turned out cat was pregnant. Long story short, cat had 7 kittens and this woman didn't know what to do with them, tried advertising them free, no interest.

We have been considering getting a cat for a while now. DD keeps asking for one and we love animals. So we adopted one of the kittens. To help out the girl and because we wanted one (though I could have gone for waiting a year or so tbh)

She has fit in really well. We picked her up on Friday night, by Saturday afternoon she was happily playing with the kids (DSC were over too), eating fine, using litter tray fine, everything. I honestly thought she would be hiding for the first few days at least due to being in a strange house and all that.

Anyway to my problem. She keeps fucking climing up my legs. She can jump up onto my knee but chooses to dig her claws in and climb up. She also seems to have a thing for standing on the power off button on my computer Literally 12 times in the past few hours. She is not wanting attention or anything, just keeps doing it. the computer part I can deal with, though annoying as hell. But the leg climbing thing...its really starting to hurt. She gets her needle claws into the same spots each time, and sometimes slips a bit so its scratches instead of pinpricks. Luckily she does not do this to the kids. She doesn't do it to DH either. DH reckons its coz she sees me as her mum and all that, which is lovely but still, it bloody well hurts.

Any ideas for getting her to stop this? I tried clapping when she did it (apparently you can train cats by clapping loudly when they do something they shouldn't?) but all that did was make her dig her claws in even more.

Please please please tell me I am not going to have months/years of this. My shredded tissue paper legs simply cannot cope...

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C8H10N4O2 · 11/04/2017 20:11

How old is she - sounds quite young still? I have occasionally adopted kittens taken away a bit too early and they have all done leg shredding whereas those fully weaned before adoption settle much quicker with less 'bad' habits to modify.

I would take two kittens over one if you can do it - they settle better and keep each other company when you are busy or working. Two will cost more than one but most of that is the initial year due to startup vaccinations and neutering etc. so worth thinking if the annual maintenance is doable for two. Also when you go away, two with a neighbour popping in will be fine together (assuming they are not indoor cats), some singletons get quite lonely and you might need a cattery.

Either way though, she will grow out of this phase and whilst it persists its worth remembering that just a few drops of cold water is quite aversive and harmless. Just give her plenty of strokes etc when she does the right things.