Need help for the Dr. Jekyll Mrs Hyde Cat!!!!!

CATisCRAZY

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Hello All,

First post here and thank you for allowing me to join.

I have 3 cats (crazy I know!!!!) and I’ve listed their personalities below.I’m reaching out about the behavior of my female cat which can be best described as Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde.


Female Tortie - 6 years old - Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde.

Male White/Grey Tabby - 2.5 years old - sweetest cat in the world and super low key.

Make Orange Tabby - 1.5 years old - super friendly and the Alpha of the group. Also the youngest and most playful still.

The boy cats are best of friends getting along great and often sleeping together. The orange boy and female do not get along, mostly due to the female hissing at him whenever he walks by.

the female... well there’s something not right in the head.
I first got the female Tortie when I was living by myself when she was super young. I adopted her from a family who found her (should have been the first red flag) and she was probably too young to be taken from her mother but I don’t know the entire back story. she started out as an extremely hyper playful kitten that was sweet and loving. She was a little crazy growing up but I put that to not having a playmate and me working during the day. My now fiancé and I started dating and she would stay with me but was scared of her and the cat didn’t let her pet her really but would sleep on her legs when she fell asleep. As the female got older the cat became more aggressive and her behavior more confusing. She gained weight and was a tank at one point, which looking back we attribute to boredom.

A little over 3 years ago my fiancé and I moved in together and my fiancé convinced me to get another cat for both her so she’d have one that she could pet and play with and also we thought it would be good that the female had a playmate. We adopted the sweetest male in the world who is one of those “special cats”. The female and the Grey Tabby get along somewhat and even play sometimes in the females own weird way but it is very limited. One day they were having an adoption at a nearby pet store that my fiancé just happened to need to get cat food at one day (total set up!!!) and we ended up later adopting an Orange Male who I can describe as sweet friendly and the goofball of the group. The female in a year and a half together wants NOTHING to do with the Orange male. All he wants to do is try and get close to her, rubbing up on her when she’s not looking or trying to touch her with his outstretched arms when they’re sleeping close. The female hissing and growls with aggressive behavior and will hit him (and the other male) if they get too

At night the female will be tucked up alongside me and is the nicest cat in the world. At times when I’m on the couch she’ll come up for never ending headbutts and to lay alongside me and never ending pets. When she wants to be fed, she is also the nicest cat because of course she knows to be nice and you get food. During the rest of her day she is a psycho. If you talk to her she will starting whining being annoyed with her tail twitching. She will bite and swat if you talk to her and try to pet her and even sometimes if you get a pet you will get a very hard bite without notice. This cat has given me some bad bites that have punctured the skin many times in an aggressive manner. When friends or family come over I tell people not to try and touch her and to not talk to her. She hisses and swats at visitors that have tried to touch her.

We have tried pheromones for the female and it does nothing. We have taken her to the vet and there is nothing wrong with her other than the vet suggesting prozac because she’s an aggressive cat in their files.

is there anything I can do to help this cat? There seems to be no Hope left that this cat will ever really get along with the others and even ourselves.

I can’t understand the cat at night that is snuggled up alongside Me in my arms but the cat during the day that may bite me/others and draw blood.
 

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CATisCRAZY

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I should also add this behavior got 100x worse when we moved into a new apartment and was still the only cat for a period of time
 

rubysmama

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Hello and welcome to TCS. Sorry it's an issue with aggression that brought you here.

Interesting that things changed when you moved into the new apartment. How long have you been there now? I wonder if there were cats in the apartment before? Are there any particular areas of the apartment where she is more aggressive? If so, could be that a prior animal peed there, and she can smell it, and makes her territorial If you think that might be the case, you can get a black light which will spot urine.

About her aggression, does she ever get into fights with the other cats? You know, fur flying or bloodshed? Or is it just hissing and swatting?

And about biting the humans, have you tried saying "owwwww" when she bites? You can also try hissing. Because she never had time to learn kitty manners from her mom, she maybe doesn't understand when she hurts you.

I'll probably have some more thoughts, but I'll let you answer some of my questions first. :)
 

ArtNJ

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This could be a more extreme version of a typical scenario. You see, cats don't trust all at once. They can trust just one person. They can trust just one person in one place at one particular time -- like you, when you are on the bed, at night. My theory is that this is a cat that never gained full comfort with the situation and you. There are some complicating factors as well. You moved. You added a human and a cat. Now its been a long time, and the cat is still not adjusting to any of this. That makes this situation unusual and hard, but what I would try to do is gradual expansion.

Here is how gradual expansion works: when you are on the bed at night or on the couch, make a call noise. Tap the couch. Offer a treat when they come up. Step two: try to use that call noise, the tapping and giving the treat to get her to come to the couch or the bed at other times for petting. Step three: lets see if your fiance can get her to the bed/couch using the same signals. And gradually expand from there. During this process, we are coaxing. We are not grabbing, picking up, putting on the lap, or anything like that. The cat is the boss.

Playing with the cat with toys is another useful method of building interaction. How is playing going? Can you/the fiancee get her to play? You want toys that don't make you scary at first; toys with range, like a laser pointer, or lure toy like Cat Charmer or Cat Dancer.

Well, this is what I would try. I don't know if it will work here; I've never tried this approach on a cat with such a long history of no progress.

P.S. Its not unusual that a cat never accepts another and settles into a "distaste" kind of relationship with growling, hissing and swatting if the other gets too close. I don't attach much significance to your cat having that relationship with one of the other two. That can happen -- generally speaking, cats have an increasingly hard time accepting newcomers as they age. This may not necessarily ever change, or you might get very slow and gradual improvements to an unknown degree.
 
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