What to Do If Your Kitten Resists Being Touched? Must-Learn Desensitization Techniques for Beginners

When you reach your hand out, if the cat has a clear movement of dodging backward, it simply won’t let you touch it. What is the reason for this? Actually, it’s just that the "touch desensitization training" wasn’t done well. Many kittens have this problem when first brought home. If you wait until it grows up to try and correct it, it is basically impossible.

Steps for Desensitization Training

So next, I will take you through how I do the training from a first-person perspective. First, prepare a liquid cat treat (strip-shaped cat food), then flip the kitten over and let it lie flat on your lap. At this moment, the little guy will definitely put up a cute struggle; let’s not panic, support the back of the little guy’s head, and stuff the snack near its mouth.

While the kitten is focused on eating, we take the opportunity to rub its head, ears, and other spots; you can try touching any part of the body, just do whatever feels natural. After touching once, we remove the snack and touch it all over again. We just pretend not to see slight resistance and feel the kitten’s state with our heart. When it is about to reach the peak of impatience, give it a bit more good food.

The whole process is: you pet it for a while, the kitten gets impatient, so you feed it a bite to calm it down; pet it for a while longer, it gets impatient again, feed it again to calm it down. Repeat this over and over until the kitten no longer resists, or doesn’t resist as much, and starts to try enjoying the petting.

Key Points to Note During Training

Throughout this whole process, you need to more or less cover the ears, head, paws, tail, and other positions. There are a few points that need attention:

1. Don’t squeeze the liquid cat treat too fast; just a little bit at a time is enough.
2. If the cat is too aggressive, you can just let it hug the treat tube and gnaw on it.
3. Feed while petting, feed after petting, or pet once then feed once; all work, adjust according to your cat’s state.

Touch desensitization training cannot be settled in one go; persist in doing it, and usually 4 to 5 times will suffice. For cats with a more stubborn temper, the number of times might be a bit higher.

Finally, remember three points: patience, patience, and more patience.