Kitten play

What is kitten play?

Kitten play is roleplay in which someone takes on the posture, sounds and behavior of a cat and is treated as a cat by the other person. Kitten play is a subset of petplay, which in turn falls under animal play. The trait that sets kitten play apart from the other animal roles is willfulness.

What kitten play looks like in practice

Like puppy play, but with a partner who decides for herself whether the game continues.

The encyclopedic description of animal roleplay sums up the kitten character in a single line: whoever plays the cat keeps a certain independence, and can, as part of the fantasy, swipe back at the partner trying to tame or train her. That is exactly what the game turns on. The other person asks for something, the cat looks the other way, and the request becomes a negotiation.

Training is possible. According to that same description, some cats are taught to do tricks: fetch a toy, beg, walk outside on a leash. And there’s a word for a cat with no owner or no collar: a stray.

So an ordinary evening looks quieter than the word “roleplay” suggests. Someone lies on the couch, gets stroked, and every so often moves to the other side of the room just to show that she can.

Why this kind of roleplay works

Because human language drops away and something else takes its place.

The only in-depth research into this kind of play is about dogs, not cats. For Archives of Sexual Behavior, Darren Langdridge and Jamie Lawson analyzed 68 written accounts and 25 interviews about puppy play, and found five recurring components: sexual pleasure; relaxation, therapy and escape from the self; adult play and vivid physicality; expanding and expressing who you are; and relationships and community.

Four of those five aren’t about sex. That explains why people describe kitten play more often as resting than as arousal. Nothing is asked of you that an adult has to be able to do. For kitten play itself, no comparable research exists.

Why people do kitten play

For the willfulness, and that is a different engine than with the dog.

Whoever plays the dog gets rewarded for obedience. Whoever plays the cat gets attention precisely by turning away, and that draws a different kind of person: someone who wants to be chased rather than led. The usual balance flips, while the power agreement on paper stays the same.

• For whoever plays the cat, the duty to answer falls away. You don’t have to cooperate and you don’t have to talk. Explaining why you don’t want something isn’t needed either.
• For whoever stays human, the pleasure shifts from steering to coaxing. The role of handler yields little obedience here and asks for a lot of patience.
• For a couple, the payoff is usually touch without a script: stroking, lying against each other, and an hour in which neither has to perform.

Kitten play doesn’t straighten out a lopsided relationship, and the “I’ll just not do what you ask” dynamic can carry on outside the game if you don’t agree when it stops. Langdridge and Lawson describe the pleasure of this kind of play. They don’t measure a therapeutic effect.

How people do kitten play

Usually without buying a single thing.

It starts with behavior, not gear: sitting on the floor, leaning against a leg, making sounds instead of sentences. Ears and a tail tend to come along only once someone already knows she likes the role. Reversing that order is the most common beginner’s mistake, because a costume on the couch is not a role.

After that the forms diverge. Some keep it to half an hour of stroking on the couch. Others build a household around it, with a name, a sleeping spot and set moments. Others again use the cat role as a stepping stone to something firmer, where the collar becomes a collar in the binding sense at some point.

What people agree on beforehand is almost always the same thing: how you come out of the role. A cat speaks no sentences, so there’s a gesture ready that signals the end.

Misconceptions about kitten play

“Kitten play is puppy play with different ears.” No, the dynamic is reversed. A pup works toward approval, a cat lets herself be coaxed. Smooth that difference away and you’re left with a pup with a tail.

“Kitten play is about real animals.” That’s the most stubborn assumption and it’s wrong. Researchers of this kind of roleplay looked for it explicitly and found no sign of it reading as zoophilia. The explanation for that is on animal play.

“But a cat is aloof, surely.” With real cats there’s something to argue with there. Kristyn Vitale, Alexandra Behnke and Monique Udell reported in Current Biology that house cats show clear attachment styles toward their caregiver, measured with criteria from research on human infants. The aloof cat is mostly a cultural image, then, and kitten play plays with that image.

What I see in this myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. Roleplay is something I enjoy, and the cat variant rarely comes to me as a request. It shows up as something that happens along the way.

Whoever brings this up rarely starts at the cat. It starts with a posture. Sitting on the floor with your head against a leg, and from there something grows that we had no name for beforehand.

The second thing that stands out is how hard the word lands and how soft the act is. “Kitten play” sounds like a costume and a pair of ears. What happens is that someone spends an hour not having to say anything and gets touched without anything having to come of it.

What you can do yourself

• Agree on a gesture that means end of play. A stopword doesn’t work on someone who only meows anymore.
• Start with behavior and buy something only after that. Posture, sound and distance do the work. Ears are decoration.
• Decide beforehand whether obeying is part of it. In kitten play, not listening is part of the role, and you don’t want to be finding that out halfway.
• Lay out a cushion. Spending hours on the floor taxes knees and hips more than people expect.
• Set an end time. The role is pleasant to stay in, which is exactly why it otherwise runs on until someone gets hungry.

More reading about kitten play

On this site, animal play is the umbrella page with the research and the line drawn against bestiality, and handler explains what’s expected of the human side. The collar has its own entry too.

Off this site, the article by Langdridge and Lawson is free to read and the fullest account of what people look for in this kind of play, even though it’s about dogs.

Where this fits on my site

Roleplay is on my list, kitten play as such isn’t. So this is something we’d dream up together rather than something I pull off the shelf. How we agree beforehand on what an evening can hold is on the page about the BDSM date.

Sources

• The Psychology of Puppy Play: A Phenomenological Investigation. Darren Langdridge & Jamie Lawson, Archives of Sexual Behavior 48(7), 2201–2215, 2019 (DOI 10.1007/s10508-019-01476-1). Phenomenological analysis of 68 written accounts and 25 semi-structured interviews. Supplies the five components of this kind of animal roleplay: sexual pleasure; relaxation, therapy and escape from the self; adult play and vivid physicality; expanding and expressing the self; and relationships and community. The study is exclusively about puppy play. Cats don’t appear in it, and that’s noted explicitly here.
• Animal roleplay. Wikipedia, section Kitten play. Supplies the description of the cat role as someone who dresses and behaves as a cat while keeping a certain independence, the point that the cat can swipe back at whoever tries to tame or train her as part of the fantasy, the tricks that do get taught such as fetching a toy, begging and walking on a leash, and the term stray for a cat with no owner or collar.
• Attachment bonds between domestic cats and humans. Kristyn R. Vitale, Alexandra C. Behnke & Monique A. R. Udell, Current Biology 29(18), R864–R865, 2019 (DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2019.08.036). Supplies the evidence that house cats show clear attachment styles toward their human caregiver, established with behavioral criteria from research on human infants. Used here only for the point about real cats that puts the cultural image of the aloof cat in perspective, not for any claim about roleplay.

Related terms

• Animal play. The wider category kitten play falls under, including the research and the line drawn against bestiality.
• Handler. What the human side of this play looks like, and why the role asks mostly for patience here.
• Collar. The object that usually comes first in kitten play, whose absence turns a cat into a stray, and which stands for binding beyond the animal game too.
• Ageplay. The role that plays not with species but with age, and takes the same weight off your shoulders.
• Brat. The other role where pushing back is the point rather than a fault.
• Owner. The counter-role to the cat, and why ownership here is about responsibility.
• Petplay. The branch kitten play sits in, and where the keeper’s role is explained.
• Puppy play. The dog role this page sets itself against, with the figures.
• Roleplay. The umbrella kitten play hangs two layers below.
• Ponyplay. The animal role where not listening is the opposite of the point.