When our feet move around the floor in fluffy slippers or bouncing shoelaces, they are shaped a lot like prey. When our feet are covered in socks or under a blanket, they act a lot like prey. When we are barefooted, with our toes in clear view... they look a lot like prey.
We can address this from a training point of view with my post, The Ambush, where I have tips on how to handle, and redirect, this predator energy.
So we can fix it. But it's important to realize there's something else going on when our cats regard parts of humans as toys. It means they have an imperfect grasp of their socialization.
lifelong practice
Socialization works both ways. It's when we regard each other as sentient beings, and care about getting along.
If our cat is a kitten, or hasn't yet encountered enough love, or is too over-cranked to realize what they are doing, they have lost track of realizing where humans end and toys begin. Fortunately, unless we have a cat who developed as a feral, there's usually enough domestication lurking in our cat to be reached and nurtured.
Then we will see our cats develop from fun, cuddly, and clueless kittens to the wise old souls we treasure in their senior years.
learning to moderate
One of the advantages of littermates is that they are able to give feedback about the intensity of the play. Right now, we are seeing this happening as Mithy gets larger, and RJ and Tristan have to tell him when he's going too far.
If our cat doesn't get this kind of feedback, they will go too far. That's when our cat becomes too rough.
It's also a function of their age. As they mature, they will get better at controlling their physical, and mental, activity. And better at understanding the feedback that helps them know their boundaries.
embrace the empathy
One of the delights of the maturing cat is how they develop understanding of our feelings. Once we form a bond with our cat, we will care very much if the other being is happy and comfortable. This puts much more punch in our expressions of delight or distress.
We taught kitten Mithy not to play with our feet under the covers no matter how tempting they were. One of the ways we saved our toes was by letting Mithy know when he hurt us. He got distressing feedback when he pounced on our feet. He got praise and happy voices when he played with the toys we gave him.
As he got older, he worked less from being redirected to the toy and more in recognition that he didn't want to hurt us.
rooted in respect
The longer, and more firmly, we treat our our cats as "people" and they treat us as "big cats," the more we will give and receive respectful and loving communications.
This is part of my whole taming/training/love process. I do what the cat wants. And this, in turn, results in the cat doing what I want.
I can't think of a better system.
As I related in Podcast #15: Taming the feral, our kitten Mithy really wanted to relax and love humans. By treating him with understanding and great tenderness, we basically turned him from semi-feral (he was captured by the shelter at five weeks) to love-bug in forty eight hours.
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There's more ways to understand our cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See all of my posts on WHY CATS DO THAT.
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