4 year old boy does NOT listen

My son lately has seemingly devolved into a blubbering ball of crying for hours on end because he's not getting his way. There have been no major changes to his lifestyle or routine.We ask him to leave the animals alone (we have a dog and 2 cats), but any time I catch him alone with one of them, he's doing something he knows he's not supposed to. One of the cats loves to be in our room, but we can't let our son stay in the room (we have to share the room for now) when the cat is there because he WILL NOT leave the cat alone. We've come back after being gone for a minute or two and the cat can't get out of the room fast enough.What urged me to post this is another post about one user's question about a very huggy child. My son is very huggy as well. He asks for a hug every 10 seconds. We've mostly gotten him to ask before he does it, but he's not quite grasping the concept of consent. He'll ask, I'll say no, then he'll melt down. Or he'll ask and won't wait for an answer, just giving a hug anyways. I feel like I constantly have to peel him off of me.This morning he was given instructions to count from 0 to 10 before he could get up (long story as to why). For an hour he cried that he didn't know how to count. When he finally figured it out and counted so I could hear him, he asked if he could get up. I asked him what Poppa said. Commence another 45 minutes of crying because "I don't know." We've been trying to get him to understand that "I don't know" isn't a proper answer, especially when we know he's capable of completing the task requested. He tends to answer "I don't know" or "I don't know how to do it" when he doesn't want to do something. I'm at an utter loss with how to fix this or change the behavior. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2GTqC32