Help, my 3 year old thinks she's a cat

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You could provide your daughter with some toy cats, cat dishes, pretend cat food, cat collars for her toy kitties (the stretchy ones, which you can find at pet stores, for safety) and cat books/magazines. I recommend this, as it is a healthy way to nurture her interest while avoiding sharing with the real kitty. Explain that, just as everyone has their own dinner plates, she and the real kitty have their own supplies. Spend some time going over examples of how to kindly and gently play with the cat, though don't expect miracles right away - my son is almost 5 and we still have to remind him of how to be nice to kitty sometimes. He has stuffed kitties, and we play with those for fun and to teach him how real kitties prefer to be petted, brushed, handled, etc.

I would not punish a child for a special interest. Explain that the litter box is kitty's toilet, not someplace kitty plays, and that kitty food is not healthy for people, just like people food is not healthy for kitties.

I used to want to be a dog just like the dog we used to have.

Gee, way to resurrect a thread that's been dormant for 11 years!

The OP's daughter is 14 now. I kind of wonder if she found a more acceptable channel for her interest in cats, assuming she's still into them. Something like volunteer in an animal shelter, where she gets to play with the cats after her shift.

Oh my gosh I was the same way. Had a magical imagination I truly believed I was a cat. My mom just played along with it. I grew out of it.

I've loved cats ever since I was really young but I never wanted to eat their food. I really liked carrots, maybe that's why I would dress up and pretend to be a bunny rabbit.

I wonder if parents are ever worried nowadays their toddler has developed a "fursona" and will join the furry fandom when they grow up.

typical children, I think this is normal. When I was about the same age, I was an airplane

Its kinda funny how old this thread is.
I just wonder if these old threads are just periodically thrown onto the website's front page or if someone did a search.

If you want to change a behavior, at least one that's so tame, then rewards work much more effectively than punitive measures. If you praise the child when she is acting like a child she will eventually try harder to please you. It takes a lot of patience.
At first it might just remind her to behave like a cat again but as soon as she does that then its time to peacefully ignore her behavior ~ after you remove the food, littler box, and cat if your child is harming it. The more she acts like a child, the more cat time she gets.



























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I wonder how the 3-year-old is doing as a 6-year-old?

Six? This thread is over 10 years old. The "cat thinker" is in 8th or 9th grade now. Hopefully, she found an age-appropriate outlet, like volunteering at a rescue organization.

My mistake. The 3-year-old would be about 14-15 years old today. Should have looked at the date of the OP.

Since we're resurrecting threads here, allow me to reply to this. When I was a child, I was extremely jealous of feral children, and hoped to become one myself. From what I saw in the mainstream media, feral children had lives of total freedom: doing whatever they wanted, going wherever they wanted, eating whatever they wanted, going to sleep whenever they wanted, and never having to worry about punishments for bad grades. While my childhood life made the Stanford Prison Experiment look like Disney World in comparison.

How did I plan to become feral? Damn if I know! I just harbored hope that one day, my parents will get so tired of my disobedient (in their minds) behavior and my bad grades, that they'll decide they don't want me as a son anymore. So they'd simply abandon me at my city's Amtrak station, the woods just outside the city, or the city dump, so that I'll either die or just get out of their lives for good, so they can adopt or conceive a new child. Which would've given me the freedom I was looking for, and given them the "good" kid they wanted.

It's much better for a three-year-old to want to be a cat-----rather than wanting to be King Kong.

It depends, would you rather have to rescue them from tall trees or from tall buildings?

Cranes can usually get up to the top of tall trees—but not tall buildings.

If the crane can't get your baby back, there's always the stork.