Cat is aggressive

by Will
(St.Louis, MO)

My cat, female 2-4 years of age, is displaying overly aggressive behavior to other people. She is randomly attacking, hissing, biting. She will initiate interaction with a person, lay on their lap, and then hiss once that person stops rubbing her. I have not been displayed this same kind of interaction at all. She never hisses at me. My fiancee and I also have a dog whom the cat has never liked. The dog does not show any sign of aggression towards the cat. I do not want to make a mistake when handling this situation. Please help.

Answer by KAte
Unfortunately this is learned behaviour and like any learned behaviour it can be difficult to change.

Why she acts like this may never be known but aggression is often a sign of fear or attention seeking. So with your dog and the random acts of aggression, this is probably due to fear, the aggression when petting stops is a attention seeking sign.

Can I ask that you take a look at my web page about scared of nervous cats for some background information here
https://www.our-happy-cat.com/scared-cat.html

Then please read the cat discipline page, this is all about positive and negative responses. This i think may be your only way forward i.e whenever they act aggressively towards anyone the negative responses should be acted upon so that the cat gets the message that aggressive behaviour receives a negative response. here is the page
https://www.our-happy-cat.com/cat-discipline.html

best wishes Kate

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