It appears that he’s trained you quite well to give him nearly constant attention! If you shut him out of a room, and he meows and you give in, you’ve reinforced his behavior–he’s learned that meowing works! That’s perfectly fine as long as you don’t mind. By the way, you can clip his claws to help make the back–hitch-hiking more comfortable.
By giving him this attention, you’ve basically told him that he’s the most important cat in the house, so he’s acting on that when he growls to keep the other cats from getting the same sort of attention.
You can cut back on the attention you give this kitty–and use tough-kitty-love to not give in. Schedule times to give each cat attention so that each knows the routine. Perhaps this needy boy gets his private time with you at night when you sleep together, and at other times during the day. But the other cats also have private time with you–even if you have to shut the needy cat in a separate room. Be strong, be consistent and know that his meowing complaints on the others side of the door will get WORSE before they ultimately fade away.
More: continued here
This entry was posted
on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 8:04 am and is filed under Advice.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
