One of the most difficult problems for shelter staff and branch volunteers is
where cats are aggressive towards them. The aim of this video is to help you to
understand why cats are aggressive and to give you some practical tips for dealing
with these situations. Like all our branches and shelters, Bryncethin has a
number of cats that are showing aggression. The biggest cause of
aggression in cats is fear. We can tell when a cat is frightened because it will
tend to move to the back of its pen, face the front of the pen, have its ears back,
right out of the way, his body will be tense and if you approach it may hiss,
spit or lash out. We tend to think that cats are fearful because they've been
mistreated. Although of course this does sometimes occur, it is more common that
cats are fearful of people because they have little or no experience of them.
These seven-week-old kittens arrived from a farm only a week ago. They may seem quite
fearful now, but they're still in what we call the 'socialisation' period. The
socialisation period is a really important period for development in
kittens. It occurs between about two and seven weeks of age and it's a period when the
brain and the sensory systems are still developing. Essentially the brain is
really spongy and everything that the kitten experiences during this period of
time almost gets hardwired into the brain and will form an idea or an expectation of
what the kitten will see as normal later in life. As an example, kittens born in a
domestic situation will learn that people and children and dogs, washing
machines and all the other things that occur in a domestic situation are normal;
whereas kittens like these born on a farm are more likely to be fearful in a
domestic situation as adults – and they're more likely to start to show aggression.
So although we love our cats, it's important to remember that not all cats
find our attention as pleasurable as this one obviously does. How an
individual cat perceives people will depend on its experiences during its
early socialisation period, as well as its individual personality. You can see
here that this cat is not really enjoying
close contact with Molly. She is really tense and trying to escape from her arms.
In an open environment, cats have several options if they are scared. In most cases,
they will prefer to run away from whatever is scaring them. Alternatively,
they may climb up as high as possible or attempt to hide inside or behind
something. By doing this, they can escape from the threat and become relaxed again.
However, in situations where a cat feels threatened but cannot get away or hide,
they often feel the need to show aggression in order to defend themselves.
When we enter a cat pen, for example, and approach them, they may show aggression
such as hissing, spitting or lashing out, just to keep us away. Often this is
successful for them as we tend to pull back in order to avoid injury.
Unfortunately once the cat has shown these behaviours, he or she is more likely
to display them again in future.
Ok Molly, who have you got here?
This is Beads.
Ok and what's her problem?
She hisses and spits and sometimes leaps at us.
Well that sounds a bit of a problem, do you know anything about her history at all?
She came from a multi-cat house and she hasn't had much interaction with people.
Oh ok. Now, we really need to see what she does. Do you think you're brave enough to
go in so that we can see her reaction?
I'll have a go!
So this is what she does. Can you suggest anything to help us, Rachel?
Yeah, there's certainly some things we can do to try to help Beads. To
start with, I think we need to make her feel a bit more comfortable in her pen.
Now, we can do that in a couple of ways. Cats are very dependent upon the scent
environment within their pen, so we need to make that a little bit more stable
for her. And we can do that quite simply by giving her two beds, so we can just
take one out each day to clean and the other one stays there and still carries
on smelling of her own scent, ok? The other thing we can do is just give her
somewhere to hide so that she can feel a bit more enclosed and a bit more secure
within her pen area. The other thing that we can do is teach cats like Beads that
we are no longer a threat to them. Cats that are not socialised prefer it when
we don't try too hard to make friends. We can do this by putting the cats into as
large a pen or room as possible, so that we can keep as far away as we can. The
cat can then be rewarded by choosing to approach us, using play or special treats,
as Molly is here with Beads.
Hi, how is she doing?
Ok. She came up for a little bit of food, but that's about it really.
Really? Ok, well it's a good start because she's just starting to
come out and it takes a little bit of time before she's going to get confident
enough to come right up to you. I think this is going to carry on for a couple
of weeks before she's really starting to come out from hiding behind somewhere
but that's great, it's a really good start.
So this is the other cat you wanted me to look at – who's this?
This is Mulan.
And what's her history, where did she come from?
She came in from a home and she had sores on her neck. And
she was also attacking the owner.
Really? Ok. I saw a sore on her neck but that's healing up quite well, isn't it?
Yeah she's much better, but she's attacking us.
What's she doing to you?
She's really friendly – you can stroke her – and then she turns around and bites you.
Oh dear.
You can see that Mulan is very
different in her behaviour from Beads. She's happy and confident in her
interaction with Molly and in fact, her aggression is occurring as part of that
interaction. This pattern of behaviour is something that she has previously
learned as an effective way of getting interaction with her owners. Very often
this develops in cats because owners inappropriately encouraged them to
pounce on and play with their hands as kittens. Once learnt, cats find this type
of behaviour innately rewarding, because inevitably owners squeak and move around,
just as their natural prey would. Whereas fear aggression tends to occur soon
after entering the pen, this type of aggression tends to get worse in cats
after they've been in the shelter or branch for a while.
This is because once they settle into their pen and feel more confident, they
can start to become frustrated through not being able to show their normal
patterns of behaviour. I've suggested that Molly does several things to change
Mulan's behaviour. To start with, we need to deal with her frustration about being
in a pen. We can help this by giving her many more things to do – for example we
can give her what we call a puzzle feeder. In this case it's simply a ball
containing cat biscuits that drop out of a hole when she pushes it around. We
could also challenge her a little bit more with her feed by hiding biscuits
in scrunched up paper and hiding these around the pen.
You can see that she really loves finding these. The other thing we can do
is to make her pen a little bit more interesting, for example by giving her a
scratching post. The other aspects of Mulan's treatment is to teach her a
more appropriate way of interacting with people. Because she likes food so much, we
can also use this to reward her for gradually increased amounts of contact
with Molly. Molly has started this programme with minimal contact and is
gradually increasing the amount of strokes that she gives Mulan before she
gets her reward. As well as external factors, things that change inside the
cat can also influence whether it shows aggression. Just like you, a cat is more
likely to show aggression if he or she is in pain, for example. Where a cat does
start to show aggression suddenly, especially where there are other changes
occurring or where the aggression is extreme, it's advisable to have him or
her checked out by a vet. So to summarise, fear aggression tends to start soon
after the cats arrive and will often occur as we put our hand towards them or
approach them. Their posture will be tense, their ears back and they will
generally be at the back of the pen. The other type of aggression that we see
tends to occur after cats are settled into the accomodation and will usually
occur as part of an interaction, with a cat's body posture usually more relaxed.
Remember that aggression problems are never simple. Just like us, cats respond
in very different ways to the situations that they're in. They're not just being
nasty. They may feel that they're defending their lives in their pen or
finding an outlet for the frustration that they feel. So in each situation, we
need to think about how we can change our behaviour or the environment that the
cat is in, so that we can make the situation not only better for ourselves,
but also for the cats that are in our care.