cats

Yeah, I'm wondering if too playful meant too attackey? Once we got a cat who had a "clean" history. He was so sweet and snuggly except he'd get in this zone where he would crash out and attack our legs and bite. We tried everything we could think of, my partner and I had had like 15 cats previously between us. No amount of play time, novelty in toys, attention, affection, space, whatever made him not attack our ankles and bite. I started feeling too anxious to walk across the house to the kitchen. With a sick pit in our stomachs we had to bring him back to the shelter. There we found out we had been lied to and he had lived as an outdoor cat for a while, and had been returned once before for biting. We had a 3 bedroom house and a screened in porch but it just wasn't enough for him. We were also discouraged from reporting the biting as it would "make it harder to rehome him."

I don't know if I'll have another animal in my house again. The biting and scratching was stressful and awful but having to return Beau was so difficult, and felt like such a failure. I can't handle falling in love and then failing another animal.

You can't judge someone for the third hand account. Maybe OP and her dad were a much better fit and the animal is different in their home.

Maybe you've never lived with a particularly wild cat? They can be quite the handful and cats have such strong personality it's hard to work with if their quirks don't mesh well with your own. They also operate on their own schedule and sometimes that means playtime is in 10 minute intervals of pure chaos randomly sprinkled about in the dead of night

I've got one that is "too" playful. I love her and she's staying, but she does need to chill the fuck out sometimes lmao.

Doesn't help that her version of playful is knives. Stabby little kitty. But she's stabbing me with love so it's ok.

Those other eight hours, some cats maintain constant lightspeed