Please tell me in a comment what you think is the best way to get your hand away from your cat who, in play, is sinking his teeth into your hand and has grabbed your hand in his paws as shown in the photos below. Sometimes they also rake your forearm with the claws of their hind legs! We know that cats are reluctant to let go and they can tend to become excited and get too rough, hurting their owner. At this point it needs to stop. How do you do it without incurring any scratches or bites? I have my way and it works 100%.
I realise that some cat owners will never get themselves in this situation. Is that a good thing by the way?
The best answer gets $40 to spend on Amazon (a winner has been announced as this competition took place in April 2016). I’ll decide what the best answer is but others can support comments in their own comments. This may influence me.
If there are only a few comments then I’ll have to abandon it! Sorry. I’ll decide within around 30 days who the winner is or if it is abandoned.
Update July 29, 2022: I have decided to update this page. As you can see Dee won the $40 prize for her answer which is to relax the hand, don’t force anything and don’t try and force your hand away from your cat while at the same time distracting your cat. You only have to momentarily distract your cat’s attention to provide enough time to release your hand. Using the other hand you can flick something around above your cat’s head. Fast moving objects always attract a cat’s attention as they are programmed to attack prey. They’ll loosen their grip and bingo you are free.
I asked the question whether it’s a good thing for your cat to grab your hand and be unwilling to release it. It is a bad idea because you should not use your hands as a play toy for your cat. For domestic cats, as you know, play is aggressive because it is built around predation. Play for domestic cats is “play-hunting”. And if by offering up your hand as a play toy you encourage your cat to develop a habit of playing with your hand it can be hard to unlearn that habit. Far better to use something else such as a cat tease. The classic cat tease is hard to beat as a toy and they can be home-made. In fact home-made toys are often the best.
The person in the photo below seems to be intent on self-harm and uses their cat to achieve this; not clever and it looks like a mental health issue but I don’t know.
Below are some more articles on cat play.
My pleasure. We are communicating by email on this.