Queen is MEAN!

Hi, my name is Sara and am new to this site, but need help! My husband and I took in a stray about a year ago, who lived in the house during the cold. She got pregnant, she likes the tomcats in the neighbor. She had 4 kittens which we decided to keep. She was very open to the kittens at first, now as the kittens reach 1 year in age, she favors one girl kitten over all others. We had all the cats fixed, but the runt (finances), but since the queen was fixed, she is very aggressive towards everyone but her favorite kitten and the dog. She follows the dog everywhere and meows at Sasha (dog's name) all the time.
My concern is that she is swatting at everyone and everything. You can only pet her for about 5 seconds before she growls and tries to get you with her claws. She will go after the kittens with any warning.
Is this normal? She used to be so sweet and loving and now she is just plain mean!
Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

brad'sbaby

Maybe shes feeling overcrowded?

Hmm I'm already out of ideas.

I agree, perhaps she is more comfortable with less cats. You might want to consider finding her a new home or some of her offspring.

Sounds like she feels crowded. Left to her own devices, she would've driven the clowder off long before now.

This is normal for a momcat. They tend to drive off the kittens as the kittens grow up. Unless you have areas where she can get up and off the floor or away from her kittens, her aggressiveness is likely to continue and even get worse. Cats do need their personal space.

I don't know if this applies to our cats, however, I had a similar situation once with our dog. She became very aggressive and mean (she was previously VERY LOVING) after she was fixed. i found a new vet that determined that our dog was fixed as she was going into heat. This made her in a constant state of PMS...not good! She was given a hormone replacement and we gradually weaned her off of it. This did the trick! Can this be true of cats? Our vet says it is true of human women as well. Just a thought.

Tara