More on understanding aggressive cat behaviour

Looks like my posting on the Cow-and-Bunny fight has generated quite some interest and feedback. 

Below is a sharing from Chen.  From my experience with my own cats, I totally agree with both authors.  Now, I can make sense of some of Cow’s seemingly “cranky” behaviour over the years.  Now, I understand a little better…

Dear Kah Yein
I want to add to the discussion about tame sweet kitties that suddenly turn aggressive (bite,etc) from the advice I got from writers that worked or made sense with my kitties.


Anitra Frazier in The Natural Cat book talks about “overstimulation biting” whereby a cat’s sensitivity threshold is crossed and the cat feels that the stimulation has become “too much to handle”. The stimulation can be both painful and pleasurable (e.g. stroking and petting). When this happens, the cat snaps and instinct takes over and will attack your hand to get you to stop. What I found particularly useful is her advise on what you should do to extricate your hand safely from the cat’s mouth. A normal prey pulls away from the mouth of a cat, so to break the cat’s instinct – do not pull away, but lean against the teeth and claws. This confuses the cat’s instincts and he’ll let go. But before the instinct to bite takes over there are warning signs to take note. Anitra mentions how she spots these signs on her cat, Purr, “Before Purr reached his threshold of stimulation, he would swivel his ears out to the side, and pull them closer to his head. His pupils would dilate and his tail would begin to whip tensely from side to side. If I saw these signs, then I knew to stop petting him and casually direct his attention to something else.”

There is another explanation offered by Temple Grandin & Catherine Johnson in their book “Making Animals Happy: How to Create the Best Life for Pets and Other Animals.” The book mentions something called “redirected aggression” which happens when “a cat is prevented from attacking one cat, and so it attacks another cat or person instead.” So a cat may attack his best buddy when he cannot attack the cat that he really wants to attack. The book further states, “If cats that live together get into a serious fight and you can’t break it up in time, it’s not easy to get the cats back together, though it can be done. If the aggression has been mild, Dr. Debra Horowitz, a cat behavior specialist in St. Louis, Missouri, advises putting a bell on the more aggressive cat’s collar. That can break the cycle of fighting because the victim cat can hear the other cat coming and calmly move away.” I personally find this explanation for sudden bursts of cat aggression very helpful because it explains why out of the blue one my cats chase each other angrily. Like one evening one cat was peeking out of the window and saw a strange cat outside, but she could not go out to get to it to chase it away, so she got really upset, and so she took a swipe at me ankles (I was next to her observing her antics) and she went chasing after her sister hissing and spitting.



Thank you very much for sharing, Chen.  The following points really make sense to me:

1.  A cat snaps at us to tell us to stop petting it.  We think the cat enjoys being petted, but it may not like it.   

2.  When a cat bites or scratches, lean AGAINST the teeth or claws instead of pulling away.  Our instinct is always to pull away and that’s when the bite hurts even more and we get scratched!  So next time, I’ll try leaning against their teeth and claws.   (please note that there is a comment below that says NOT to do this, so please read both and decide which is better!)

3.  When a cat cannot attack its intended victim, it will attack its best buddy – doesn’t this remind you of us humans too?