How to stop my cat from biting me?

Here is how to stop your cat from biting you. The first thing to do is to decide whether your cat is biting you in play or in anger. If you like to play with your cat and if play gets a bit rough (in a nice way), your cat might nibble your hand as part of play. The force used by your cat will be about 25-50% of maximum. It still may cause you discomfort and it may break the skin of your hand, but the cat is playing. The way to stop this is to stop playing rough. Play more gently and stop when your cat becomes a little agitated. Cats can go from play to genuine hunt mode if wound up enough. For the cat, play is a substitute for hunting.

Cat Bite - photo by vainglory

The more difficult "problem" to deal with is if your cat bites you aggressively for no apparent reason. In a normal household with decent cat caretakers and well socialized cat(s) this will not happen. For a cat to bite his or her "owner" the cat has to be nervous and defensive and/or in pain or discomfort. Something will be wrong from the cat's point of view.

Assuming that the cat is:

• not ill and
• not in discomfort and 
• not being mishandled by his human caretaker and
• is well socialized, 

...it is likely that he is insecure for some reason. There are likely to be environmental reasons. We create the environment. Cats like calm, quiet, routine and a reassuring home. These areas should be checked out. We should ask if we have created the correct environment. Check for illness with your vet as a precaution.

There are other reasons why a cat might be aggressive but these will probably be one-off incidences. If a person is asking, "how to stop my cat from biting me" it implies that it is happening all the time.

Ninety percent (90%) of the time, the reason why a cat is biting his owner will be because of something the owner has done and/or created provided the cat has been socialized to animals and humans during the first 7 weeks of his life.

You might ask yourself if your cat is socialized to domestic life. Breeders will ensure that the cats they breed are socialized. They are allowed to run around the house and interact with other animals, visitors and the breeder's family. Without that the cat will behave like a feral or semi-feral cat and be defensive towards people causing him to bite when approached.