Cat Viciously Attacked My Mother Twice.

[yaykittyeee]

Is your mother the only one that smokes in the house or do the attacks always happen after she smokes?  Cats are very sensitive to smells, some more so than others.  The smell of smoke is stronger right after smoking so it may be irritating or alarming to the cat to have such a smell around or it may be masking your mother's normal scent.  I have a cat that is irritated by cigarette smoke(she doesn't attack anyone, just runs off).  There was an instance where one of my cats got out of my apartment during the night and we got her back the next morning.  The two cats I have are normally very close but after bring the one cat back inside the other cat would approach her, sniff, and then hiss and back off with his fur standing up.  This lasted for a day or two before he started treating her normally again.  I think it was because he didn't recognize her smell, that he was treating her like a new cat.  If it is the smell that your cat has a problem with, you may want to put the cat in a room for a while when you mother smokes and leave the cat there for a 15-30 min. afterward till the smoke smell on your mother wears off a bit or you can try that cat calming air freshener stuff.  I've heard that's pretty effective for uptight cats.

 

[stewball]

I was also going to say the smoking. It always seems to happen when your mum is standing by the door smoking. Or it's standing by the door that's bothering her? Like a threatening pose to the kitty?

 

[shoshanna]

My Sammi has always been very good and no aggression other than the normal kitten stuff.  The last week there has been a feral cat coming around during the night, never during the day and frankly if it were not for Sammi I would never know there was another cat outside, but the cat sprays the door and the bushes right outside and it makes my cat inside nuts.  He gets to banging at the windows and growling and hissing and that is not his normal behavior.  You say this happens when the door is cracked for you mother to smoke.  Maybe there has been a strange cat outside "marking" the territory and you would not notice it unless you saw it being done, but the cat can tell immediately.  There are compressed air cans with motion sensors that I saw used on a television show about cat behavior and it spritzes the strays every time they come around before they spray the area.  Stray cats can cause a lot of indoor behavior problems even if they are never seen by us.  The indoor cats know every time that they have an intruder.

 

[lisas dozen]

I just came across this very interesting research article making the correlation between women with depression and an increase in cat bites. Here are some excerpts:

~~Researchers are considering three possibilities to explain their results. The first two cite depression as the cause of the correlation, stating that perhaps depressed people are more likely to be bitten. One reason for this increased likelihood is that depressed individuals are more likely to adopt a cat, and depressed women are more likely to do so than depressed men. The second possible factor is that depressed individuals are more likely to act in a way that facilitates biting. ~~Depression can cause hormonal shifts that may be noticeable to animals, including cats. Additionally, it can cause a loss of responsiveness and social cues that may elicit atypical behavior

~~ By combing through a large pool of data, researchers discovered that more than 41% of people treated for cat bites were also treated for depression at some point. This surprising correlation raises several questions, especially considering that this percentage rises to 47% when the correlation between bites and depression is restricted to women.

~~But when they considered the gender of the victim, they found that 85.5% of the patients who suffered from both cat bites and depression were female.

 

[catspaw66]

 
I just came across this very interesting research article making the correlation between women with depression and an increase in cat bites. Here are some excerpts:

~~Researchers are considering three possibilities to explain their results. The first two cite depression as the cause of the correlation, stating that perhaps depressed people are more likely to be bitten. One reason for this increased likelihood is that depressed individuals are more likely to adopt a cat, and depressed women are more likely to do so than depressed men. The second possible factor is that depressed individuals are more likely to act in a way that facilitates biting. ~~Depression can cause hormonal shifts that may be noticeable to animals, including cats. Additionally, it can cause a loss of responsiveness and social cues that may elicit atypical behavior

~~ By combing through a large pool of data, researchers discovered that more than 41% of people treated for cat bites were also treated for depression at some point. This surprising correlation raises several questions, especially considering that this percentage rises to 47% when the correlation between bites and depression is restricted to women.

~~But when they considered the gender of the victim, they found that 85.5% of the patients who suffered from both cat bites and depression were female.

I saw no indication in the OP's post that suggests depression. The researchers these days are too ready to blame depression for everything. I had a doctor diagnose depression, and put me on Paxil. What I had was a fistula between my large intestine and my abdominal wall. This resulted in having to undergo emergency surgery, three weeks in the hospital and a $60,000 hospital bill, with no insurance.

Please post a link to the article. I really want to see it.

Welcome to TCS. Please don't take the tone of my post as a slam or put-down. I tend to speak my mind and sometimes I come off a little (or more) strident.

 

[stewball]

I am a chromic depressive since my early teens. Whisky and blighty have never bitten me.
Nor did softy gentle lotto daily lily or brandy. So I must disagree with these experts :-)