my cat has a serious behavior problem. he is typically pretty good to me, minus a random swipe here and there when i startle him (but he's mine so i tend to give him a hard pat on the butt and put him in my room afterward), but he is really bad to others -- specifically my roommate. ... but he bites here, which is beginning to really scare me a bit.
tonight she came in and grabbed a bunch of stuff off of the table and crumpled a plastic bag (which is what i think scared him) and he lashed out at her really badly and bit her on her inner theigh. it broke the skin and bruised really quickly.
does anyone else have a moody cat with unexplainable behavior problems?
he is four years old. i took him in as a stray. his mom was refusing to nurse him, so i ended up dropper feeding him for about two weeks before i could get him on hard food. i've heard that dropper feeding leads to aggression as they age -- but that seems a stretch.
any suggestions?

6/25/2006 11:05:43 PM

Quote :

"i've heard that dropper feeding leads to aggression as they age -- but that seems a stretch"

does it?

6/25/2006 11:18:32 PM

neutered?

6/25/2006 11:42:16 PM

you better be glad I'm not your roommate. I would have drove that bitch down to the closest Chinese restaurant

[Edited on June 25, 2006 at 11:46 PM. Reason : but yeah is he neutered?]

6/25/2006 11:46:00 PM

neutered. has been since he was six months.

some of the stuff i'm reading now basically says he's bored and suggests a playmate. i've considered getting a second cat for a while, but i worry about him being territorial. he likes other cats, but he's always been "the new guy." i've never brought another cat into his space.
he has lived with another cat before. at first they didn't get along at all, but they were eventually civil and played a bit.
when i take him to my parents' house, he tries to play with their cats, but they usually aren't too interested.

where are all of the kitty experts? wake up!!!

6/25/2006 11:53:45 PM

that's crazy. ive never had a cat with an aggression problem.

against people, that is. mike tyson loves to kill his stuffed rat though

[Edited on June 26, 2006 at 12:01 AM. Reason : haha]

6/26/2006 12:01:03 AM

i would say that if you're interested in getting a second kitten/cat for your cat to look into pet fostering. i know different cats get along differently, but if you could basically test it out with a pet for a few months to see if this helps your cat.

i don't know all the details of fostering, so i apologize if it doesn't work how i imagine it would. but if you fostered a cat and they got along you could either adopt that cat or another. (i'd hate for you to adopt another cat and end up having to find another home for them because of the original cat's behavior problems.

6/26/2006 12:05:31 AM

I've never had a cat that was aggressive and jumpy like that. So I don't know.

But if what you're reading is true, another cat could be a great idea. I had a 3 year old cat that was very needy and making an extreme pest out of himself. He was very sedintary and was all over us from the time we came home in the afternoons until the time we went to bed. I decided that he was lonely, so we brought home a kitten from the SPCA.

The cat and the kitten took to one another immediately once the kitten got over being weirded out by a cat more than 10 times his size. It has been a year now and they are great friends. The younger cat has gotten my older cat up and moving. They play together a great deal. They also spend a lot of time in a fur pile grooming one another. The older cat seems happier and doesn't make a pest out of himself as he did before. In this instance, the addition of another cat was definitely the right thing to do.

If your cat truly is bored, maybe another cat could help. But I would be cautious about bringing another cat into the house because of his behavioral issues. You would hate to bring another cat into the house and he react to the addition negatively.

6/26/2006 12:07:19 AM

i should have named my cat mike tyson ... instead, he's lennox lewis. lennox definitely isn't a victim here though, he's the biter.

6/26/2006 12:08:36 AM

any one else have anything to add?

6/26/2006 9:50:04 AM

i have a cat at my parents house and a cat here like that. I wish I could say waht causes it. My cat at home in really nice to us, but attacks my boyfriend, like not playing, seriously going after him, hissing and spitting. Our cat here, is again, nice to my boyfriend, me, one of my roommates, but not the other. And the 1 year old I babysit, she seems deathly afraid of and runs away hissing and growling. The only thing I can say is pay as much attention to your cat as you can, don't bother trying to "punish" them, I've heard that only makes it worse. Is he biting people on his own? I mean, you are not holding him or anything. Ours don't bite unless they are being held and are tired of it. If I were you, I would take the cat to the vet and see what they say, if he's biting without being really provoked. He may have something that could be fixed with a shot or something.

6/26/2006 9:57:30 AM

when was the last time he went to the vet? sometimes animals are aggressive when there is something wrong with their health. If the cat has always been like this then that is probably not it. Another thing, is some cats are just plain ass holes. When they don't get their way, the lash out. You can try getting another cat, but what if they never get along? what would you do with the new cat? has something changed in his environment that maybe you don't think is something big but it could be bothering the cat. You need to discipline the cat when he acts like this too. Spray him with a water bottle.

I would recommend contacting a cat rescue and telling them what is going on and seeing if 1-they have any ideas and 2-if they would adopt a very mellow, cat-friendly cat to you on a trial period. That way if it doesn't work out, then they will take the cat back from you.

good luck

6/26/2006 10:03:15 AM

everything i've read says spray bottles do nothing but scare cats, and that trying to discipline a cat is a lost casue.
his last visit to the vet was july of last year, and he is scheduled for a visit next month. i think he's fairly healthy. he's had a history of urinary tract infections, but there is usually visible evidence if that's a factor.
i called my vet this morning to ask questions ... i'm waiting to hear back from her.

6/26/2006 10:33:18 AM

If I were your room mate, you'd come home and find that bitchy cat stapled to the wall.

6/26/2006 10:34:07 AM

be mean back to it? i have a cat at home who i try to be nice to, but she never willingly comes up to me. she doesn't bite like your cat, but still. it's like i don't exist, and she's supposed to be 'my cat.' my brother is mean to her. he'll completely ignore her, or when she's on the couch he will slam her against the back of it (not hard, i mean it's a couch..) and she loves him. follows him around, purrs, sleeps with him. it's so weird. so be mean back haha..

6/26/2006 10:37:52 AM

is your cat indoor only?

every cat i've met thats been stuck inside its whole life has been a little bitch. probably due to lack of exercise/excitement/motivation/happiness

6/26/2006 12:26:19 PM

Look into something called redirected aggression. We had an indoor cat that was a severe case. She would smell where the neighborhood cats had marked the front door and she would also see them through the window. She wanted to get at those cats so bad that she basically flipped out and attacked the first thing she saw out of frustration of not being able to get to them.

She would go into a fit where she would growl and stalk us through the house. If we got to close or didn't see where she was hiding, as more often was the case, she would spring out and unleash death on our feet. Never in my life have I seen a cat act like this - and she was at least 2 years old when she started. When she got in her mood she would actively chase anything or anyone in the house with the intent of inflicting massive damage - and she did.

We had to end up getting rid of her because we had a 3 moth old baby at the time (the bad behavior started before the birth of our kid, died down for several months to the point that we thought it would be ok, and then flared up again).

We eventually got a new cat but the experience left us a bit scarred (literally). We were afraid of the new cat attacking from some unknown location for a while and it took some months to get over - the new cat is the (bi)polar opposite. Real patient with even our 2 year old.

6/26/2006 12:37:04 PM

I had a cat like this once when I was a kid. He was this big orange cat named Garfield and most of the time, he acted like Garfield (lazy, ate all the time, etc). However, the one person he hated was my dad. He wasn't particularly affectionate towards anyone, but he would allow my mom and I to pet him on occasion. Every morning, my dad would get up to go to work. He would get ready and go to head out the door in the kitchen. Garfield would always jump from the chest freezer (where he was sleeping) to each chair around the kitchen table and pop out in the chair next to the kitchen door and greet my dad by literally attacking him. It happened every morning. Sometimes if Garfield was in a particularly bad mood, he would chase my dad around the house with his ears folded back swiping at him. My dad tried everything to get him to stop: being super nice to him, hard pat on the butt when he attacked him, and even just trying to stay out of his space...nothing worked. We even got a new cat for him to play with...he played with it, but still attacked my dad. He was neutered and everything, so we didn't know what to do. Then, all of a sudden, it just stopped. He quit attacking my dad...he wasn't affectionate to him, but he wouldn't pounce him every time he walked by. He sort of grew out of it.

6/26/2006 12:44:15 PM

^^ i have been reading about redirected agression. i blamed his first attack on my roommate on this because she shut the sliding glass door when he started hissing and growling at the stray on the back porch. she got between him and the door and it got ugly.

i don't think the cat was on the porch last night, but the attack was in the same area of the kitchen.
she's pretty scared of him, and i really think he can sense that. i don't know if that causes him to be more aggressive with her, or what. it is disturning regardless.
i can't get an appointment with the pet bahavioralist until august. ...maybe a good thing considering it may cost upward of $360 just for the visit.

if any of you have classes with Dr. Barbara Simpson at the vet school, please mention my problem. Free advice a plus.
...guess i could email her, but she'd probably just tell me to schedule a visit.

6/26/2006 1:42:43 PM

Ooooh, he has fuzzy feet! I love cats with fuzzy feet!

If he's six, and is the center of attention/baby/only pet, then be EXTRA careful if you decide to get him a buddy. It really does sound like attention, redirected aggression, or he just really wants to play and doesn't mean to do it. Does he growl or hiss when he is being mean to people (naturally he will be mean to the stray cat because that's HIS house)? Get him a catnip toy, or get some catnip in a bag and put it into his favorite toy if he won't play with it. Catnip will make him drunk, and a little more pleasant. (While he's drunk, you might could get your roommate to love on him. Or ask her to feed him for a little while-maybe he'd be nicer to her then.)


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Instead of making a new thread, I have a cat question. My Mom's cat was spayed last week, and her incision looks swollen. No drainage, no bleeding, no bursted stitches, doesn't look inflamed or irritated, and she's not paying any extra attention. She has, however; been playing a whole lot with my kitten since her surgery. I know it's going to swell, but tomorrow will be a week. Any advice would be appreciated!

[Edited on June 26, 2006 at 4:20 PM. Reason : ]

6/26/2006 4:16:59 PM

yup, he's got fuzzy feet. he's the only one i've seen like that though.
and he's only four ... but he's still used to being the 'only child.' that's actually why i've put it off so long, because i don't want him to be jealous and get meaner.
i think part of the problem is that he is male -- males are just problems in general.

6/26/2006 4:26:23 PM

I swear our kitten is bipolar. He can be fine and then suddenly he gets really mean really fast. Sometimes he plays with the older one but most of the time he just grabs her and latches on and tries to bite her neck. He's bad about biting people and scracthing. I think he's possessed. He goes from being happy and purring like crazy to getting mean. It's weird.

6/26/2006 5:51:44 PM

Mine is the opposite, she runs and hides around other people usually. She is usually pretty nice, unless she wants to play and I want to sleep. If this occurs I must keep my feet covered or she will bite and scratch the fuck outta my toes!

6/26/2006 5:55:08 PM

If a fucking cat tried to chase me around my house I would kick it through the wall.

See if it chases me again. Ever.

Its probably what your dad did when you all weren't looking at him.

6/26/2006 5:58:16 PM

^yeah really...i've found that to get cats to act right, you gotta show them who is boss, and they wont fuck with you anymore if you just give them some discipline

6/26/2006 6:00:15 PM

Quote :

"minus a random swipe here and there when i startle him (but he's mine so i tend to give him a hard pat on the butt and put him in my room afterward)"

Cats more likely than not won't respond to a pat on the butt as meaning "you did something wrong, don't do it again," but more like, "damn, she hit me, I'm going to get more agressive." Try a swift pat on its nose with your two fingers along with a firm "No!"

6/26/2006 7:18:46 PM

My cats like to have their butts patted with a flyswatter. They get all lovey.

My cats responded well to the nose swat.

6/26/2006 7:34:07 PM

De-clawed cats tend to go through crazy periods. Was yours de-clawed?

6/26/2006 8:21:06 PM

^^^yup, the nose and NO works pretty well.

our cat at home, Boots, still tries to scratch up some of the kitchen chairs, but he knows what the thump on the nose means. He gets sorta crazy at times too. He'll sleep or just lay around a lot, just chill. and then all of a sudden, he'll start biting peoples' toes, attacking your hand if you rub his tummy (he honestly normally doesn't mind it), but he doesn't claw or anything...

he's a good kitty. if i could have him up here in raleigh, i'd be !

6/26/2006 8:45:40 PM

my sister had a cat that would literally attack everybody except her. and by attack, the cat would run at you as soon as you entered her house and would claw and bite. fucking cat went away from there. i would consider the same.

6/26/2006 9:13:55 PM

i like animals as much as the next guy, but taking a cat to a pet behaviorist is rediculous.

6/26/2006 10:39:15 PM

well, they got along ok today. and the problem is semi-solved, until the next roommate. tdoay she accepted a job elsewhere and is moving in july. i'm really happy for her because i know it's what she's wanted.
so, as long as they get along until the end of next month, life will be good.

6/26/2006 10:48:55 PM

I'm glad i'm not the only one who 'spanks' their cats. My dad thinks I'm crazy and says it doesnt work with cats. My cats are VERY well behaved, and i've only had to swat at each of them once or twice. the male more often b/c he likes to jump on counters. I definitely agree with the nose swatting and a firm 'no'. My cats know the term 'bad kitty!' very very well, to the point that I can just say that with a stern voice, and they know what will come next if they dont stop what they're doing. A mother cat will swipe at kittens if they're annoying her, so the behavior is understood. Its just a matter of catching them in the act, and reacting in time for it to count.

I also agree with letting your roommate feed the cat for a week or so. Catnip toys, or the jingly ball toys are great distractions for cats with too much energy for their own good. Hope you work things out!

6/26/2006 10:55:32 PM

Quote :

"...See if it chases me again. Ever...."

Yeah, you better believe that when our cat mauled my foot that I kicked it... which prompted it to act even more savagely. The only solution was to lock it in a room until she calmed down, which could be hours. Like I said, we had a severe case - the cat had some serious mental problems.

Quote :

"i don't think the cat was on the porch last night, but the attack was in the same area of the kitchen. "

The cat on your porch may have marked your porch as its territory and your cat probably smells it (or worse, I think I may have tracked some of the scent into our house once). It might be showing some form of redirected aggression out of the frustration of wanting to defend what it thinks of as is its territory but being incapable of doing so because of being confined indoors.

[Edited on June 27, 2006 at 7:46 AM. Reason : -]

6/27/2006 7:45:45 AM

You might want to try something called Feliway. It's sort of a Glade Plug-in type device that release calming kitty pheromones. You can get it at PetSmart for about $30 and it lasts about a month. I used it when I moved my cat. I wouldn't say it's the greatest thing ever, but I do believe it helped.

[Edited on June 30, 2006 at 12:19 PM. Reason : 1]

6/30/2006 12:14:55 PM

In my experience cats are just like women: Insane.

6/30/2006 1:04:17 PM

I have a cat that is extremely aggresive...While in school I would wake up to the shreeks on my girlfriend b/c the cat would wrap his claws around her face and pull her hair with his mouth.

He is much better now b/c he is an outside cat instead of being in a small apartment. On rainy days he still will attack if the mood catches him right but then he just gets put outside. He also has a problem of throwing things off shelves if he is in one of his moods. He has broken many pictures and decorations just being an a$$.



In my opinion...some cats just aren't indoor only cats. They need to go out and beat the h3ll out of other animals. This cat actually beats up may parents 35 lbs dog on a reqular basis.

[Edited on June 30, 2006 at 1:11 PM. Reason : pic]

[Edited on June 30, 2006 at 1:14 PM. Reason : .]

6/30/2006 1:10:49 PM

if your cats claws are long enough to scratch you (the front ones), you need to clip them. I've never been scratched by my two since the day I brought them home. I cut mine back far enough that their front claws are blunt, and couldnt scratch even the carpet.

6/30/2006 1:17:48 PM

Why do you idiots put up with an abusive pet? Toss that asshole outside with nothing more than a prayer and a slap in the fucking head.

6/30/2006 2:08:48 PM

My cat acts STPWN3D all the time, excepts when he's huntin or busting the asses of the other pets.

6/30/2006 11:35:23 PM

Quote :

"some of the stuff i'm reading now basically says he's bored and suggests a playmate. i've considered getting a second cat for a while, but i worry about him being territorial. "

thats rediculous, a new cat in the house would only be seen as competition,

only cats that have grown up together will play with each other

7/3/2006 2:24:26 AM

Be very careful with cat bites. Their mouths are full of bacteria and can easily give you an infection.

We recently had a problem with one of our cats. We bought Paco when she was two, and she was primarily an outside cat. She was super friendly, never had any problems with her or anything. The man we bought her from said that she wasn't too good with other cats, but we introduced her slowly via our outside porch, kept an eye on her when she was meeting our cat at home. Sammy, the cat we had at home for a year was only a year old, but much bigger than Paco. He doesn't have a mean bone in his body, so he never really provoked her and because they are opposite sex, really didn't have any territorial or competition issues.

However, a while ago, our cats were outside on our glassed/screened-in patio. It was getting late at night, and our cats spotted a stray outside in the yard. Sammy really didn't think anything of it, but Paco immediately started slinking around, was quite puffed up and her pupils were really dialated. We ushered the cats inside and Paco immediately started attacking Sammy. Not play fighting, fighting to kill. Sammy can easily keep her away, he's much faster and fitter, and can hold up his own. Fur was flying everywhere, hissing and spitting. My dad tried to pick up Sammy to get him away from it, and Paco ended up leaping on him. She bit and scratched his hands to shreds.

We now no longer let her out on the porch at night and keep a small water gun handy in case she starts attacking any of the other cats. She was a bit quirky a week after the incident, and only had to use the water gun once.

I don't know if that helps.

7/3/2006 10:24:00 AM

time for the farm.

7/3/2006 2:57:05 PM