If you’ve had the pleasure of doing a behavior consultation with me, you may have heard me use the term “trigger stacking.” Trigger stacking is sometimes called stress stacking (which is the term I am beginning to prefer, but that’s beyond what you probably care about), but the concept is the same. It’s something that can contribute to a lot of unwanted behaviors in cats.
What is stress stacking in cats and why should you care about it? I’ll give you the low down because it can affect almost every behavior problem I help clients with.
What Is Trigger/Stress Stacking?
Trigger or stress stacking is a fancy way of saying that multiple stressors add up to create additional stress. Independently, each stressor may be an annoyance to your cat or they may be better able to cope with the stressor. When they happen at the same time or in close proximity to each other, their capacity to cope is exceeded.
A Pot Of Soup
Think about stress stacking like a pot of soup. The pot can only hold so many tasty ingredients. If you keep trying to add more to the pot, it will spill over eventually. If you add too much heat, the soup will boil over.
Think of the ingredients and heat as being stressors your cat experiences: they can only fit so much in their metaphorical pot before there’s a big mess. Certain stressors can fit better with others (adding more liquid might be fine as it can fill in the gaps around solid ingredients, for example) while others (such as the heat) will affect the whole soup regardless. In other words, the stressors themselves can impact stress stacking.
There is only so much stress each individual cat can take before everything just becomes too much for them. Some cats have a larger pot so they can fit more soup. Your cat may be particularly unbothered because of their breed, personality, or other factors. Other cats have smaller pots so they will boil over quicker if you’re not careful.
What Happens When My Cat Experiences Stress Stacking?
There isn’t a single predictable behavior or even set of behaviors that cats will display when they are experiencing stress stacking. You may see some of the following:
- Stronger reactions to stress
- Worsened unwanted behaviors
- New or multiple unwanted behaviors
- Intermittent behaviors such as house soiling when stressors occur
Basically, your cat’s behavior will become more extreme, but it won’t necessarily be consistent if stressors come and go.
How To Fix Trigger Stacking In Cats
If you suspect your cat is experiencing stress stacking, what should you do? Removing stressors is the obvious and simple answer, but that isn’t always possible. Whether you can identify the specific triggers impacts what to do next.
If You Know What’s Causing The Stressors
If you can identify some or as many of the stressors contributing to your cat’s stress stack, you can reduce the total amount of stress your cat experiences. Remove any sources of stress that you can or reduce the intensity of ones you can’t completely remove. Getting your cat used to something potentially scary to them such as an inhaler or going in their carrier can reduce the stress of medical treatments and vet visits by making part of it less unpleasant.
Addressing Unknown Stressors
Even if you can’t pick out every specific stressors, you can still reduce stress stacking in cats by reducing their baseline stress level. A few things to try:
- Using catnip, silver vine, or valerian root to put your cat in a good mood
- Giving your cat more control and predictability in their life
- Spend more time playing with your cat
- Add in more resources, especially scratching posts and vertical space
- Remove deterrents (even ones marketed as humane), stop using a spray bottle, and overall be kinder to your cat
- In extreme cases, rehoming may be the kindest solution for the cat
If you’re still stuck, start tracking your cat’s behavior to see if you can piece together any possibly triggers by tracking their behavior. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think your cat has anything to be stressed about or if something doesn’t seem stressful to you. Your cat is who experiencing the stress stacking and they think differently than we do.
