kitten (2 months) trying to nurse on male cat(1year)

Question

It started about a week ago and has progressed very quickly. She did not do this when they first met. The older cat has no issue with it. Now were to the point where she is started to chew hair off. We’ve tried separating but its hard to do 24/7 and she does it any chance she gets. Have any advice?

Answer 1

Step one: make the male cat's belly inaccessible.

You can do this by making some sort of "shirt" for your male cat. I've seen people talk of using a large men's sock and cutting off the foot for this purpose. Or a bandage wrapped sufficiently tight (but not too tight obviously) would probably work. If you keep this up long enough, hopefully the kitten will give up its habit of nursing.

Step two: Try to address any underlying problems.

Cats sometimes nurse after weaning to self soothe from stress, or to alleviate boredom. Playing with the kitten more can help with both of those problems. See if you can devise other ways of keeping the cat entertained, such as making your windows more accessible, clicker training, or even leash training your cat.

Look for other signs of stress, like the cat hides a lot, the cat's eyes are dilated, the cat acts very jumpy, the cat kneads excessively, the cat shows timid body language. If you notice these things, try to figure out what exactly seems to stress out your cat and fix these problems.

Some general things you can do that help lower stress are spreading your cat's scent around the house by moving objects it uses to spots it doesn't really go to, providing more cat furniture to help the cat be off the floor, and giving the cat appropriate things to hide in.