How To Stop a Bengal Cat (or Active Cats) From Biting

Cats bite. It’s part of their nature. However, I’ve been around cats long enough to know that most cats bite humans not because they want to but because they learned to. This guide is to share my experience of how I trained all 4 of my cats, including my Bengal cat, to stop biting from beginning to end.

How Do You Stop Bengal Cats From Biting?

Here are some quick steps to immediately stop a Bengal cat from biting:

1. Hiss at them to let them know it’s unacceptable. Kittens and other cats hiss when the play or interaction is too rough.
   
2. Make a loud noise. This can be either a clap, or using an object.
   
3. Keep toys that they can bite in your pocket. This allows them the Bengal cat to replace their habit of biting you with the habit of biting a toy.
   
4. Make it uncomfortable to bite you. Using non-toxic sprays (some people even use hot-sauce, which is also non-toxic to cats) on the places where your Bengal cat bites the most can dissuade them from biting.
   
5. Know their body language to prevent bites and attacks. Knowing a cat’s body language is an important skill that all cat owners should know.
   
6. Tire them out with play or use cat wheels! A tired Bengal cat is a calm Bengal cat!
   
7. Combine all of the above and stay consistent for the best results. Bengal cats are known to be a consistent breed. Their biting behaviors subsides when they approach 8 to 12 month mark.

The sections below will allow cat owners to notice and train their Bengal cats to develop into well-rounded cats that don’t bite!

What to Avoid When Trying to Stop Bengal Cats From Biting

Cats are very different from dogs – they don’t understand and can’t connect the punishment to their behavior. Therefore, they require a different training and disciplining method that’s a lot less direct. Any prolonged direct disciplining of your cats will cause them to fear you, which no cat owner wants.

Avoid doing these things to preserve your relationship with your Bengal cat:

• Angrily shouting at your Bengal cat.
• Physical hitting or pushing.
• Using a spray bottle.

Most Common Reason For a Bengal Cat Biting: Over Stimulation & Boredom

Overstimulation can seem to be a very sudden thing. Sometimes, your Bengal cat could seem super calm and loving one minute, and then all of a sudden, a couple of bites and kicks later, you throw him off your lap in a scream of pain. As kittens, when cats are getting used to new sensations, smells, and the world around them, they can overreact to certain feelings.

My Bengal, Latte, had a pretty bad case of this. A couple of pets and strokes would send him into a fit of excitement, and he will start wrestling with whatever he currently had a grip of with a flurry of kicks and bites. Even my current kitten now is exhibiting these same behaviors. If I was a first-time owner without any experience, it could be alarming and even a little shocking as it does seem to come from nowhere.

Unfortunately, these misunderstandings about biting and aggression do cause issues for their owners. There are cases of some Bengals or cats being given away or abandoned because they thought their cat was too violent or aggressive, which is usually not the case. So I hope this article will clear up some of the misunderstandings that might happen.

Also, it’s important to note that Bengal cats are very energetic cats. If they’re bored, this can lead to a lot more behavioral issues. Therefore, it’s important to give them a lot of attention and playtime either with interactive toys or with a companion cat!

Observation Strategy: Know Your Bengal Cat’s Body Language

Our first step is to step back and really see when they actually bite and why they do it. From my experience, in most biting cases, it’s just a matter of over-stimulation and not aggression or fear. The cat or kitten really does get too excited and can make them start to behave more roughly—especially Bengal cats, as they are just so much more energetic.

This overstimulation is caused by the feeling of static caused by your hands stroking their fur. Some cats will understand this feeling as normal, and others may not! And as a result, they can react to your petting or even sitting on certain types of material as uncomfortable!

This can make cats lash out and try to let you know what it wants you to stop whatever it is you’re doing (which sometimes could be nothing).

Here’s what to look out for in terms of a cat’s body language to know when to interact or not interact with your cat:

Overstimulated Body Language	Relaxed Body Language	Boredom Body Language
Quick tail movements.	Still tails or very slowly moving their tails.	Wandering around.
Staring at the focus of stimulation.	Unfocused and relaxed.	General destruction. Knocking stuff over & biting random objects.
Visibly jittery & finds it hard to stay in one spot.	Sleepy, calm, and still.	Very vocal with drawn-out meows.

Correcting Overstimulation in Bengal or Active Cats

Once you see the tails start whipping back and forth, be prepared to stop what you’re doing. So what do you do if your feline companion is exhibiting these behaviors? Leave. Any continued interaction with the cat is just reinforcing these behaviors.

So the best course of action to start to correct this behavior is just literally to walk away.

If it has already started biting you, do not react even if it is painful. Try to calmly and slowly move your hand (or whatever it is biting) away and walk away. It lets the cat know that everything stops (including play) if the cat gets too rough!

Once you know when to stop interacting with your Bengal cat, then it’s time to train them to stop biting. Unfortunately, cats that grow up without being taught this at a young age or grew up without a mother (which teaches them to bite inhibition and many other crucial behavior corrections) can be more difficult to train, so it requires a bit of patience and consistency.

Correcting Boredom in Bengal or Active Cats

Boredom tends to be a more straightforward fix since it has to do with their stimulation. Increasing a cat’s engagement can be done in three ways:

1. Increase playtime or frequency of playtime with your cats.
2. Improve the environment in a way that’s a lot more engaging for cats to interact with.
3. Having a companion cat or another animal that they can play with!

A typical adult cat requires about 30 minutes of interactive play a day. A kitten will require more than that! Especially a Bengal kitten. However, if the environment is adequate, kittens can focus their energy on exploring what’s around them!

When Is It Aggression or Fear?

• If a cat is feeling fear, its ears would be the sign it is flattened on its head with dilated pupils.
• If a cat is actually aggressive, most cats would be vocal and start to warn you by growling, hissing, or meowing.

However, there are times when it is legitimately aggression or fear. This would be a bit more obvious as the cat won’t even respond to play or food because it doesn’t feel secure in its environment. In these cases, I would do a more careful investigation and make a thorough inspection of its whereabouts for the whole day.

It could mean several things. Such as sightings/smell of a foreign cat within its territory, health issues, or trauma.

Desensitization Strategy: Train & Stop Bengal Cats to Stop Biting

When is a time your cat is most calm or distracted? These are the times you can start to train them to be more tolerant of your touch and associate them with positive feelings!

There are two times I have observed when they are at their peak tolerance:

• When cats are sleepy or resting after play .
• During their mealtimes.

Eating is the easiest because owners control the time that they can train their Bengal cats. If you’ve been feeding your cats at certain times every day, then it’s easy to have a consistent training schedule.

Begin stroking your cats during meal times and see how they react. Usually, they’ll continue eating and ignore your hand. Try touching their bellies and top of the head. Usually, those are more sensitive areas.

The more you do this while they’re eating, the more they’ll associate your petting with a positive thing (because cats are very highly food motivated). Eventually, they’ll realize that your hand is a source of good feelings and pleasure.

Another thing you could do is to hand feed them. Hand-feeding is one of the most effective ways to associate good feelings towards the hand. While you give them food, maybe give them a little pet. You’ll find that they start to ignore the hand completely and just let you do whatever you want as they munch on their yummies.

Trying to pet them when they’re sleepy is a bit more difficult because it’ll be at random times, but when you observe that your feline friends are a little more lethargic, begin with a gentle touch and move on to a more normal petting.

Watch the tail. The tail will reveal most of what he’s feeling. The more it thrashes, that’s your sign to be a little more gentle and slow. Try a different area. As it slows down or stays still, you know you can maybe go a bit further with your touch to other more sensitive areas maybe or maybe do a full stroke.

It’s a lot of trial and error to see what your cat likes. If the tail continues to thrash and he gets overstimulated. Then stop, walk away and try the above strategy again at another sleepy time. For more methods on how to pet your Bengal cat, read my article (My Cat Won’t Let Me Pet Them!).

Misdirection Strategy: Replace Habits to Stop Bengal Cats From Biting

A lot of cat behaviors are habit-based. Whatever they were used to doing or playing with when they were young, they tend to keep those preferences as they grow up.

So if their owners used a lot of hand-playing during the Bengal cat’s kitten phase, they’d tend to prefer hands to munch on when they get older. This is a problem because the bites are no longer ‘love’ bites, and now they could actually hurt and draw blood. So it’s important to start young.

It might not be hands and feet for your cat. It might be something inanimate. If they begin to bite anything undesirable, such as cables, plastic, then you know they need more physical playtime. More toys will help. Cats, of course, have different personalities, so they’ll prefer different things.

Have different types of toys with different textures and sounds around in the house. Observe and note what toy or item they go crazy for and will play with for hours. Then you put away the ones that they don’t care too much about and take one or two of those toys and keep them in your pocket.

For your convenience, I have curated and put together a list of the best toys for indoor cats with explanations of how to use each one effectively.

Whenever your cat exhibits behaviors that you don’t like, throw them one of those toys. Again, it reinforces the idea that whatever they were biting on before is not as fun as the toy you just threw. And so, it begins to create those habits. It lets them know that some things are meant to be played with, and others are not.

How to Stop Bengal Cats From Biting: Conclusion & Recommendations

None of my adult cats bite anymore. Especially not my Bengal. I can rub him on his belly (which most cats do not like) he wouldn’t react. Even if I try to over-stimulate him he’ll at most give me a fake-out bite. This means he’ll make it seem like he’s going in for a bite but doesn’t do it.

My current kitten is feral and is somehow more energetic than my Bengal when he was a kitten. So I have to be consistent in his socialization as well. I am going through the steps above for the new addition, and he is already learning quickly.

I hope these tips help you in controlling your cat’s biting behaviors. It’s fundamental and simple tips but effectively controls your cat’s behaviors if you’re consistent with it!

Here are some of the most useful misdirection items to replace their bad biting habits into good biting habits: