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Why friendly cats attack
By DR. MARTY BECKER
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
One minute you are enjoying a tender moment petting your purring cat and then,
all of a sudden, your lovey-dovey kitty whirls around and attacks you.
Cat lovers pull away wondering, "What just happened!?"
"Most of these problems can be linked to people who acquire kittens too young in
the belief that they'll develop a closer bond with the cat," explains Carolyn
Osier, a breeder of cats for more than 30 years and an all-breed judge for the
Cat Fancier's Association.
Having watched almost 300 litters of kittens develop, Osier notes that, just
like children, certain feline social skills develop at different times. A kitten
acquired at 6 weeks of age may be fully capable of eating from a dish and using
a litter box, but still needs to master social skills such as learning how to
fight and play together.
Kittens learn their more serious fighting and predatory skills by engaging in
what look like serious tussles, but actually are play battles that don't involve
the use of teeth or claws. If a kitten chomps or claws too hard, the game is
over and he learns, in no uncertain terms, that he has to control himself with
family.
Given the importance of these skills for the cat's survival, missing these
lessons sets the stage for problems later.
Kittens who are denied access to other kittens and adult cats to assist them
during in this important developmental period will try to learn these critical
lessons as best they can by interacting with people. They will tackle ankles or
arms, biting and kicking with their hind legs just as they would another kitten.
But because humans don't know the appropriate "play gentle" signals, nor have
they sharp little teeth and claws to fight back, these kittens don't learn that
such aggressive behavior hurts.
Osier says that 12-week-old kittens who experience the necessary "basic
training" to develop these social skills will be no less bonded to people later.
Dr. Myrna Milani, a veterinary ethologist and author of "CatSmart," adds another
dimension to this fur-nomenon. Milani says that cats may bite and claw people
because these folks inadvertently stimulate the animals sexually when they
rhythmically stroke them.
A normal feline female partner holds still when a male grips her neck with his
teeth and holds her with his front paws, then may lash out with their claws
after sex.
Unfortunately, people who don't know this often panic when they feel the firm,
but not harmful grip of teeth and front paws in response to that stroking or
lash out at the cat who takes a swipe at them. This bizarre human reaction
naturally startles the cat. The confused cat naturally panics, too, and may then
trade in the gentler sexual teeth and claw displays for the more serious
fighting or predatory ones to protect himself from this irrational human.
Some people mistakenly think neutering will eliminate this behavior. But
neutering only removes reproductive organs, not brains. Granted, it dulls sexual
urges but the hard-wiring remains. Dr. Larry Lachman, co-author of "Cats On The
Counter," says the problem occurs in a wide variety of cats -- young cats,
un-neutered and unspayed cats, cats given outdoor access, cats who reside in
environments shared with nasty neighborhood cats, abused cats, cats not
adequately socialized with people during their first six months of life.
If petting your cat sometimes makes it swat or bite, you may be dealing with a
bossy "alpha" cat, says Dr. Nicholas Dodman, author of "The Cat Who Cried for
Help." In such cases, ration petting and learn to read the warning signs, such
as flattened ears, furtive sideways glances and tail twitching. That's a good
time to quit.
So the best way to avoid these miscommunications is to pay closer attention to
your cat and learn to recognize the signals, which, while subtle to us would
read loud and clear to another cat, that it is time to stop the petting.
Put another way, it can happen with almost any cat, so your best bet is to be an
educated owner.
Dr. Marty Becker is the co-author of the book "Chicken Soup For The Horse
Lover's Soul."
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