Cats can be aggressive too

When I was in Veterinary School I had a class mate that used to come in to class with bite marks and scratches all over her hands and arms. When she told me she had a cat at home and that she got these wounds from playingwith her cat, I assumed she had a Bobcat or Mountain Lion living with her.

Actually she had a regular old domestic short-hair that looked pretty much like a normal cat. Unfortunately this normal looking cat had a checkered past or misspent youth. Not that he hung around pool halls or anything. He just didn't associate with the right crowd or maybe any crowd, for that matter, and that is a common history for cats with aggressive behavior issues.

Poor early socialization is a key factor in the development of aggression disorders in cats. If a kitten has no contact with people for the first seven weeks of life they miss out on important interactions and can be very shy and reclusive. If they have no contact with people for the first fourteen weeks they can be downright mean and nasty.

Orphan kittens never learn how to interact with other cats or learn important social skills from their mothers. My classmate's kitten was an orphan and never learned how to temper or moderate his play-fighting. When your mom never teaches you that you just bit too hard or that it's time to retract those claws, you can do some serious damage "playing" with your owner.

As we've learned scolding or even engaging when your cat is behaving badly is not the way to deal with the problem. Much better to disengage and ignore the miscreant until normal behavior is re-established. My class mate would have been better off using counter conditioning as opposed to attempting to establish a normal social hierarchy on a cat with no early socialization.

Like dogs, cats have various forms of aggressive behavior under the two broad classifications of offensive and defensive aggression. These problems are handled in much the same way with cats with a few general caveats.

Dominance aggression in cats can involve urine marking and spraying and sometimes overlap with litter box issues. The commonplace nature of multi-cat households also adds another dimension to feline aggression.

With numerous cats living together it's imperative to make sure that all have access to shared resources like litter boxes and food dishes. Make sure that dominant cats are not terrorizing less dominant cats. If they are, they may have to be confined until they can play nicely. Less dominant cats need to have hiding places like cat perches and cubby holes where they can get some alone time. These perches should be sized for one cat only.

Pleasing cat pheromone dispensers can be a big plus for achieving harmony in multi cat households too.

Along with counter conditioning and desensitization behavior modification techniques drugs may play a more useful role in cats than in dogs. Those drugs that relieve anxiety and enhance the activity of serotonin seem to be useful in many forms of aggressive behavior in cats.

As always remember to consult with an expert for best results. Feline aggression can result in serious injury to other cats and human members of the household. If you have young children or older parents or anyone with a compromised immune system living in your household, a cat bite or scratch can have really serious consequences.

My son and his girlfriend raised a cat named Lucy that had not been socialized properly before they adopted her. She was very shy around other people and would run and hide whenever strangers were around. When we first visited them I never saw the cat. My wife Chris, a true cat person, was able to coax her out from under the couch after about three days of trying.

Through patience and love Lucy is pretty normal now. She's not the most outgoing cat in the world. In fact I've never gotten her in my lap, but Chris has and Drew and Sara give and receive lots of snuggles from her. So patience is a virtue and orphan kittens need love too.

Just be prepared.

Comments

[Buddies]

Socialisation is just as important for cats as it is for dogs.