The Wrong Way To Play with Your Cat

My 11 and 10 year old girlies playfight and occasionally ask me to join, they come to me one after another, with this "menacing" side step, flop and do the same play meow they do to eachother. Usually nowadays The Ring (My bed) turns into a communal massage parlor.

I did the hand toy thing for a long time my cats about three years old and he don’t wanna play with any toys I get him he isn’t aggressive or anything he’s very nice and vocal but idk how to get him into toys only thing I think of he liked was a moving fish

I've noticed with my cat that she doesn't use her claws when doing this to me or the kids. The only time I've seen her use her claws is either she wants to stop or we took it too far. She also likes this with our feet, but we've cut that out because she started hiding and pouncing on our feet. She 3 now btw

“Sometimes they can be a mean drunk”

I can picture it now, at first he’s all playful and lovey dovey then after one too many sniffs bam he’s raging drunk. That’s when their secret comes out and they start speaking clear English “dam it Sharon I told you to clean my litter boxes! One of these days Sharon, one of these days bam zoom straight to your bunny kicking doom!”

you are genius, new Kitten daddy here with zero experience. Thank YOU for saving me from making rookie mistakes…

I got a 1 yr old-ish cat. He was clearly taught to hand play as a kitten. He got out on the street, and now he's in my hands. Literally, his claws and teeth are in my hands. Luckily, my parents' first cat was the same way, so I don't get mad and can tell the difference between aggression and play, but it's hard convincing my kitty not to cover me in scratches. One thing I've been doing is teaching him "shake" so if he starts in on my hand, I can take up a paw, say "shake" and he'll retract his claws. Then I can redirect with a toy!

this is super helpful because our almost two year old cat LOVES to play with us as much as he loves playing with his toys alone. he loves chasing and being chased and will play "hunting each other" again and again by running back to his hiding spot after we jump out at each other. my partner roughhouses with him like a dog and although he's learned not to bite or scratch hard he definitely will try to initiate play with them by nipping their arm because he's learned that he can be rougher with them. he doesnt do that to me haha

My cat is 13 and does the back leg kicking thing but it doesn't ever hurt so I dunno what you're talking about. She's super gentle. If they're clawing you up you're not doing your job as a parent to cut their nails lol. She literally loves play fighting and will purr the whole time and let me rub and kiss her belly. Like super duper into it.

My uncle used to wear a heavy work glove in combination with the plastic bag the newspaper came in. If he was wearing this, his cat knew it was on, and he was allowed to go all out, but then he knew that once the glove came off the game was finished. I like that as a compromise because it both sets boundaries, but really lets your cat wild out at the same time.

If you wear a heavy duty glove to play fight with the cat, would the cat see the glove as the thing to attack instead of your hand ?

I differently needed to here this!!! 😮

I've always played with my hands and have no problem with that, they won't seriously bite or scratch you, they're playing, if they go too rough you just stop the thing and play with a toy to get some energy out of the cat, but I'd never have cats if I was supposed to avoid playful contact with them by my hands.