Being the target of aggressive behaviors by a cat can be scary and potentially dangerous. While it can be easy to write it off as your cat being mean, angry, or because of one of the many myths about cats that exist, the reasoning is usually something different. Let’s talk about why cats aggress toward humans starting with an example from my own life.
My Cat’s Aggressive Behaviors
While I spend all day helping people address their cats’ behavior, what originally sparked my interest in cat cat behavior was my own cat, Zoloft. He, seemingly out of nowhere, followed me around and bit me repeatedly. It was terrifying to say the least, but the worst part was the feelings of fear I had of a cat I loved so deeply.
I wondered why my normally sweet cat was being so mean. Why was he suddenly being such a little jerk?
Was He Really A Jerk?
Knowing what I know now about cat behavior and cognition, it turns out he wasn’t being mean or a little jerk. At the time, I didn’t take into account the most important perspective of all: my cat.
As someone who got to spend over 5 wonderful years with him, I’d hardly describe Zoloft as an jerk. He was an excellent cat. Most of our days together were spent enjoying each other’s company. There was something else going on and figuring out what that something was ended up being the key to addressing his behavior concerns.
If you want to read my full story of what I did, check out my origin story.
Reasons Your Cat Is Behaving Aggressively
While there are a variety of reasons cats bite or scratch, being “mean” is never one of them. This is a very human centric way of looking at the behavior when really you have to view things from the perspective of your cat. It doesn’t benefit cats to start fights in nature as they could end up being killed or injured. They have to be really motivated to act aggressively.
Actually, as scary as aggressive behavior can be for us, it’s usually a sign of something scary happening for your cat. Your cat may be experiencing one of the most common reasons for aggressive behavior: anxiety.
Anxiety As A Cause of Aggression
As mentioned earlier, it really doesn’t benefit cats to get into fights. Cats risk injury or even death if they don’t emerge victorious. House cats maintain a lot of their ancestral tendencies, including an aversion toward fighting. This means if a cat is biting, scratching, or otherwise exhibiting aggressive behavior, something big is going on such as feeling so afraid that they need to defend themselves.
In other words, the cat may be so fearful that they feel it’s worth risking injury or death to drive whatever is scaring them away.
Reasons For Fear Based Aggressive Behavior
Anxiety may show up in the form of aggressive behaviors for a variety of reasons including:
- Feeling cornered and seeing no other way out of the situation (which is part of why we’re moving away from flooding based behavior modification techniques)
- Past learning. If a cat successfully drives away something scary by scratching at it, they may be more likely to scratch the next time they encounter something scary due to negative reinforcement.
- Individual temperament, genetics, and other things we don’t have control over. Some cats are more likely to defend themselves while others are more likely to run away or freeze in place.
- Communication being ignored. While it may seem like aggressive behavior has come out of nowhere, chances are your cat is giving some sort of body language signal that they’re feeling uncomfortable. For example, a cat hissing is a warning vocalization saying the cat wants you to back off. If you ignore that, they may feel the need to escalate.
Additive Anxiety and Stress
In some situations, cats may act aggressively in situations you wouldn’t expect them to if they’ve had multiple stressors occur in a short period of time or are feeling anxious at baseline before the event. This can lead to something called trigger stacking (sometimes called stress stacking): your cat is behaving aggressively due to anxiety or stress because of multiple reasons for their anxiety and stress. The additive effects make the problem worse.
You Have Probably Experienced Stress Stacking
To help you understand what your cat is going through, let’s think of an example where you may have experienced stress stacking. Pretend you’re having a bad day: you get cut off on your way to work, there’s traffic, you spill your coffee on yourself, and you barely make it to work on time. Upon your arrival, you have an unusual amount of e-mails that you need to respond to.
After work, you notice it: bird poop on your windshield.
While you normally may have brush off the bird poop on your windshield as no big deal (it’s probably easier to clean bird poop off your windshield than clean cat pee out of your carpet), today it sets you over the edge. You end up spending 10 minutes in your car crying because it is just too much.
This is how your cat feels when they’re experiencing trigger stacking.
Had each stressor occurred on a separate day, you probably would have moved about your life without much thought. Instead, you’re now crying in your car because that final objectively minor stressor was too much to deal with right now. You didn’t have time to decompress from each stressful event so the total amount of stress you’re experiencing is much higher than usual.
If your cat is in an environment that constantly is bombarding them with stressors, doesn’t allow them to engage in normal cat behavior, or they have repeated stressors without time to reduce their stress, they’re going to find even minor events to be overwhelming. This additive stress may result in aggressive behaviors.
The best thing you can do in these situations is to work to reduce your cat’s anxiety and fear. This could involve removing the source of fear or helping your cat feel the world is more predictable.
In situations where it may not be possible to remove the source entirely, you can work with your cat to get them gradually used to the source of anxiety. In some cases, you may even be able to create a positive association so they willingly participate in formerly stressful things like taking medications, using an inhaler, or getting their nails trimmed.
Frustration Can Cause Cat Aggression
Returning to the story at the start of this post, the reason my sweet Zoloft was aggressing toward me was because he was frustrated. I wasn’t paying enough attention to him or playing with him enough. His needs weren’t being met.
We, unfortunately, see cats as easy pets when really, the things that make them easy are the result of us neglecting their basic needs. Not taking care of their basic needs is not only not great for their welfare, but it can lead to behavior problems including aggressive behaviors.
Play Aggression May Be Due To Frustration
Play is a behavioral need of cats and daily play sessions with your cats are necessary. Not playing with them can lead to frustration because it means your cat’s natural instinct to hunt isn’t being met. If your cat doesn’t have an outlet for this need, they’ll end up trying to hunt anything that looks remotely like prey instead of just playing with fun cat toys. If the target is someone in your home, we call this play aggression.
In kittens in particular, it’s normal for some “aggressive” behaviors to occur. It’s usually lighter and less dangerous because it’s an attempt at play, but that doesn’t make it less stressful for the people involved.
Unfortunately, even attempts to reduce stress in cats by providing things to do can backfire if they cause frustration. Using laser toys sparingly or videos of birds can be a way to occupy your cat for a while, they shouldn’t be the only source of enrichment for your cat because they can’t catch the bird in the video. Always follow up with actually satisfying play that allows your cat to catch a toy.
Redirected Aggression
Another frustration based reason we see aggressive behaviors in cats is redirected aggression. Redirected aggression is aggressive behavior such as biting or scratching due to frustration or anxiety directed at something other than the source of the frustration or fear. It commonly shows up as aggressive behavior with a clear trigger that is directed at a nearby person, cat, or other animal.
A few common scenarios leading to redirected aggression in cats:
- An especially territorial cat seeing another cat outside
- Cats seeing critters they’d like to hunt, but being unable to reach them
- People trying to pick up cats during a cat fight
- A cat that is afraid of noises reacting to an unexpected loud noise
Preventing And Addressing Frustration
What can be done if your cat is frustrated? If there’s a clear cause for the frustration, removing the source of the frustration when possible is the best starting point. If you can’t do that, preventing your cat from seeing it is another good option. For example, you may not be able to prevent birds from flying around outside, but you can add a one way mirror film over your windows to prevent your cat from seeing outside.
If the problem is boredom, adding some fun cat enrichment is a great first step. That may include things like:
- Increasing the amount of interactive play you are doing with your cat
- Use cardboard boxes to enrich your play sessions
- Adding mental stimulation via training
- Doing scent work with your cat
- Using puzzle feeders (as a supplement to active play)
- Making their environment cat friendly so they have more places to climb and scratch
While active, interactive play is going to be the most effective of these, you can’t be expected to keep your cat busy all day. Most people end up finding a combination of active playing and passive enrichment works best for their cats.
Medical Reasons For Cat Aggression
Not every reason for cat aggression is purely behavioral. When I begin working with clients on a behavior concern, including addressing aggressive behaviors, one of the first things I suggest is a medical exam to rule out illness as contributing to the behavior problem. If cats are not feeling their best, they may prefer not having anyone near them and be more likely to act aggressively.
This is especially problematic if your cat is experiencing pain. If they’re in pain and you touch somewhere that hurts, they may bite or swat to get you away from them. Even if you don’t touch somewhere that hurts, they may still prefer being left alone so the aggressive behavior is an attempt to communicate that with you.
According to PetMD, some common medical causes of aggressive behavior in cats include:
- Arthritis
- Infections
- Injuries
- Dental problems
- Neurological disorders
This is hardly a complete list and there are many potential medical reasons that your cat may be in pain. If you notice a change in your cat’s behavior, set up a veterinarian appointment so they can see if there’s something they can treat.
If there isn’t something medical happening, your veterinarian may still be able to offer some suggestions. If you still aren’t sure why your cat is showing aggression toward you or someone else, getting a professional assessment of your cat’s behavior by a cat behavior professional can stop the guesswork. They can help you figure out what is happening and what to do about it!
