Your question made me think of when my brother was 8 or so, and we had a cat that loved to hide behind the long curtains between the livingroom and diningroom, just to surprise us by jumping out and ... biting! We all shooed him off, but he kept coming back. One day my little brother got so fed up, he picked up the cat and bit it across the back! "Miauauau!" was the immediate reaction, and a black-and-white streak up the stairs.
From that day on, Whisky never bit again ... at least not my borther