Hello Reddit, hopefully you guys can help me figure out what's going on with my female cat. Not sure how to accurately describe the situation so bear with me here, and admittedly I'm still a little shaken from the experience last night. As a background, we have three cats - two of the sweetest males known to man, and Gatsby, our only chunky monkey female (seriously, she's the heaviest of the three and it's very noticeable).
My family and I have had Gatsby for two years, and acquired her from a terrible situation as a kitten. She was flea-ridden, fairly malnourished, and her mother was unfortunately hit by a car and lying on the side of the road deceased when we rescued her from the slum she was living in kind of bad. We know she had a rough start, and it's taken until this year for her to start being affectionate and cuddly despite play and constant attention. She didn't hiss or bite us or anything like that - rather, she was simply aloof, but would play and try to get our attention by scratching things she wasn't supposed to (she is NOT attention starved, though I'm sure she would tell you otherwise). She also follows my family members and me around the house during the day. She doesn't want to be right next to you, but she does enjoy being in the room with you.
But with the affection, she also began to be aggressive. She didn't start showing signs of aggression until earlier last year. We ended up taming down a wild cat and adopting him. At first, it was a mess because she would hiss, the haunches would rise, and she would threaten to attack both this new youngster and our now 12 year old male cat (see below for our "calm down" methods). Thankfully, this has since dissipated and they've become quite good play buddies, but every once in a while, something grinds her gears, so to speak, and this aggression surfaces, and more recently it's become more frequent. It's almost never around the younger cat, and seems to happen more around the elder cat. My folks and I don't know what it is causing this aggression or why she's acting this way. I don't want to be rude here, but I would compare it to a trigger: she is fine one minute, she gets triggered by something unknown to us, and then she turns into a violent Gremlin. I read somewhere that certain kinds of cats are characterized by their colors/breed, so if this helps anything, she actually looks like a Gremlin: thick, short black fur with a tuxedo chest.
We understand some of the triggers, like when she gets startled and she's not expecting it, or even the faintest scent of the vet (going to the vet is a very unpleasant experience, to put it mildly). But, for example, last night, our eldest cat was at the water bowl, drinking, and she took one look at him and started hissing, spitting, and growling. The youngest cat wasn't in the room, much less on the same floor, so it wasn't him. It was simply my mother, our eldest in the kitchen, and Gatsby approaching from the dining room into the kitchen. I don't think it was a territorial issue, since there are two other areas in the house in which they can get food and water. None of us know why this happened, and like I said - our two male cats are completely non-aggressive and have never attacked anyone before. In fact, our eldest hides at the slightest hint of anything that could POTENTIALLY be scary. He's the pansiest pansy on the planet, and he got scared and cowered when he turned and saw her hissing and growling.
Here's what we're doing to calm these episodes:
- Timeout Room: She gets placed in a spare bedroom with ample food, water, and comfy bedding available to her for anywhere from an hour to 24 hours. We give her at least an hour of "quiet time" before we check on her, if not more.
- Calming collar: we ran out of these, so she's been without one for a few weeks, but she is getting one of these on her around noon today (the aggression has been going on longer than a few weeks, just as an FYI).
- My dad: For some reason she's absolutely in love with my dad (despite being my girl, don't ask me why). My mother and I send him into the battlefield to try to calm her down. He is the cat whisperer for every cat that's come into contact with him. However, this is increasingly not working, and she bit him last night.
Does anyone have any experience with aggressive cats? Is there something we're doing that is upsetting her that we're unaware of? Is there something we could be doing to help out Gatsby? We have no intention of rehoming her, because for all of her crazy, we love her, but we would like to understand these moods more and ease the severity, if not ease their occurrences altogether.
TLDR: Have two boys and a girl kitty. Girl Kitty is flipping moods for seemingly no reason. Girl Kitty had a rough life and hates anything to do with the vet but we don't know all her triggers and her mood swings are worsening. Please help us understand why Girl Kitty is turning into a Gremlin at seemingly random times, and if there is anything we can do about said mood swings.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/aditg7/aggressive_female_cat_any_ideas_why_and_what_to/
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