Training a Maine Coon: how to stop biting, clawing the furniture and night-time wake-ups

You can't train a cat the way you train a dog. A dog works for approval, a cat works for results: it repeats what worked and stops doing what gets it nothing.

Everything practical follows from that. Here are the three most common problems and the general principle underneath them.

Why punishment doesn't work

A cat doesn't connect punishment with what it did. It connects it with the circumstances: the place, the time and, most of all, you. A punished cat doesn't learn that clawing the sofa is wrong. It learns that clawing the sofa is dangerous when you're around, and saves it for when you're out.

Shouting, smacking and spraying water from a spray bottle produce one reliable result: the cat becomes wary of you. Trust is lost quickly and takes months to rebuild, and the behaviour doesn't change.

What works is a different approach: make unwanted behaviour pointless or impossible, and make the behaviour you want pleasant. Everything below is a variation on this.

The kitten bites your hands

This is the most common complaint in the first months, and the cause is almost always the human.

A kitten learns how hard to bite within its litter: bite a littermate too hard and the game stops. That's one of the reasons kittens don't leave before three months: a kitten taken home at two months hasn't finished that course.

At home the owner starts playing with it using their hands, and the hand becomes a toy that's fine to bite. At two months that's cute; at two years a nine-kilo cat grabs your wrist for real.

What to do. Never play with your hands or feet, only with a wand toy, a ball or a teaser. The rule applies from day one and to everyone in the family.

If it bites during play, the game ends immediately. Freeze, move your hand away, get up and leave. Don't shout and don't pull away sharply: to a cat, a sudden jerk looks like the hunt carrying on. Come back after a minute and offer a toy. The link "teeth on skin means the fun is over" sinks in within a couple of weeks.

A separate word on overexcitement. When a cat is overstimulated by play, it bites everything in reach, the air included. End the game before that point, not after.

Claws on the furniture

A cat doesn't wreck the sofa out of spite. It's shedding the old outer sheaths of its claws (a physical need) and leaving scent marks at the same time: there are glands between its toes. So the job isn't to forbid it but to redirect it.

The scratching post has to suit a Coon. Tall: the cat stands on its hind legs and stretches right up, which is more than a metre. Sturdy: nine kilos will knock a light post over by the second day, and after that the cat won't go near it. Material: jute or sisal.

Put it where the cat already scratches, not in a far corner where it's out of the way. You can move it gradually later. Put another one next to where the cat sleeps: cats sharpen their claws as soon as they wake up, while they stretch.

Make the damaged spot unpleasant. Double-sided tape, a protective panel, a cover. Cats don't like anything sticky under their paws.

Praise the right behaviour. When you see the cat using the scratching post, praise it and give it a treat. This works better than any amount of forbidding.

And trim the claws every two to three weeks: a short claw catches less on the upholstery.

Wake-up calls at 5am

Cats are active at dawn and dusk; it's their natural rhythm, not naughtiness. On top of that, Coons have a long childhood: a three-year-old cat still thinks night-time was made for racing up and down the hallway.

But the early-morning wake-up call is almost always learned behaviour. Once, the cat woke you, and you got up and filled its bowl. It worked, so it will happen again.

What to do. Rearrange the day. An active game in the evening, about twenty minutes, until the cat is panting and lies down. Straight after the game, the biggest meal of the day. A predator that has eaten after a hunt goes to sleep: that sequence is built in.

Don't respond in the morning at all. Not with your voice, not by moving, and certainly not with food. Any response rewards the wake-up call, including an irritated "go away". For the first few days it will be worse than before: the cat will push harder to check whether its trick still works. That's a normal stage; you just have to get through it.

A timed automatic feeder set for early morning solves the problem for good: the cat stops linking breakfast with you.

And leave it things to do at night: toys, access to high places, a view out of the window. A cat with something to do is less likely to come and check whether you're still alive.

What always works

Predictability. Meals and play at roughly the same times. Cats cope badly with chaos, and some problem behaviour is caused by anxiety. Having people around, on the other hand, is something a Coon gets used to easily: the breed is people-oriented, and being part of your life is a reward in itself.

Consistency. If playing with hands is off limits, it's off limits for everyone, always. One exception from one family member undoes everyone else's work.

An alternative instead of a ban. No clawing the sofa: here's a scratching post. No biting hands: here's a wand toy. No lying on the table: here's a shelf higher than the table, because height is what matters to a cat.

Speaking of tables: a Coon knocks things over not out of malice but because its paws are big. Put fragile things away; there's no point trying to train physics.

When it isn't about training

If a cat's behaviour changes suddenly (it turns aggressive, starts hiding, stops using the litter box, or in old age suddenly starts yowling at night), it isn't telling you about its personality. This is how pain, hyperthyroidism, urinary tract problems and cognitive changes in older animals show up. Behavioural techniques won't help here.

First, message the breeder you got the kitten from: they know the line and how its relatives typically behave, and a couple of questions are often enough for them to tell what's normal from a warning sign. If you still have doubts after that conversation, see a vet to rule out medical causes. Only after that does it make sense to work on behaviour.

A cat does what works

If you work out what the cat gets out of the unwanted behaviour and take that away, the behaviour disappears by itself. Usually what it gets is your attention.

For marking and territorial behaviour, read If your cat has marked the sofa; for a kitten's first days at home, read The first days at home.

Home in Raksi Maine Coon cattery, St Petersburg. Our kittens are on the Kittens page, and you can ask about behaviour in our VK group (in Russian).