- Joined
- Mar 17, 2012
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Hi everyone! I posted on this forum awhile back about my 9 year old cat, Max, who has an auto-immune disease.I come today with a different issue. Max has always been...feisty, we'll say. Ever since he was a kitten he would easily get overly stimulated and "attack" people. It was pretty normal kitten/young cat behavior; the degree of intensity was somewhat of an issue though.As he got older, he, for the most part, mellowed out...until recently.Max has always preferred my boyfriend over me, which is ok. He doesn't like to lay with me much, or sit in my lap, etc. Keeping that in mind, it puzzles me that Max will almost always direct aggression towards him and very rarely me at all.Here is a typical scenario:Max will be playing with one of our other cats. During this, he'll go from just playing to getting angry with it. When he gets to this point, he will turn away from the cat he's "playing" with and will come over to sit directly in front of my boyfriend and will stare him down. It could be just a matter of seconds to even minutes of just staring at my boyfriend, then Max will full out attack him. Max isn't trying to inhibit his bites or anything; he's TRYING to cause pain and do damage. My boyfriend will try to just leave the area and Max will follow, literally, chasing him. The only way my boyfriend has been able to escape from it is to have a barrier between them, like a door. After awhile, Max will normally calm down and the boyfriend can come back.That is a typical scenario and the following describes 2 occasions that were different.Max was playing with a cat while the boyfriend was sleeping on the couch. Max became angry with the play, ran over to my boyfriend and attacked him...while the boyfriend was still asleep.Another instance started out typical. When Max went to re-direct to the boyfriend, I physically interrupted by picking Max up with the intention of just removing him from the room. Max attacked me to the point that I had to scruff him to detach myself from him. He was able to cause some damage before I was able to get away from him.We keep our cats nails clipped, especially Max, because of this issue in an attempt to at least, minimize the damage to us. I have discussed the increased aggression with our veterinarian as Max has blood work done monthly. The vet, I think, thought it was sort of amusing that I'm complaining that my cat is overly aggressive but he said that the steroids he is on could be causing it to some extent. The problem with this is that IF IT IS the medication, there is really nothing we can do about that as Max will be on steroids for the rest of his life in an attempt to control his auto-immune disease.I have in the past been able to distract Max with food to calm him down...but that doesn't seem like a very good idea either.What do you guys think?