This a sign of a bored cat?

[bryce]

It's been a while since I've been here, but having a issue with my cat.  My mom and brother are both getting fed up with it and they keep saying they're going to declaw her, then say they're only joking, I don't know what to think anymore about it.  But the cat will just randomly attack them they say, I haven't seen her do it personally to them though.  The only change to her was we stopped giving her wet food because she was getting to overweight.  And just now, she was laying on top of the chair in my room and I just went to rub her on the head and scratch her and out of no where she attacks me, there's a nice size scratch on my hand from it to.

Is this just a bored cat or what?  We try and play with her every night, but she lasts like 5mins then stops playing with the toys.  What can I do to get my mom and brother to stop with the declawing non-sense, I've showed them pictures of it to no help, asked them how'd they would like it if someone cut their fingers off, nothing works.

What can I do to get her to stop attacking.

 

[violet]

The only change to her was we stopped giving her wet food because she was getting to overweight.

What you describe is the behavior of a very frustrated cat. The reason? The change in her diet. She is trying to tell all of you she is not happy.

Any diet change can lead to frustrated behavior. Cutting down on food, whether dry or wet, can lead to surprising, unexpected angry behavior that includes aggression and even peeing outside the litter box.

No doubt, you have your kitty's best interest at heart, so I'd like to share some very important information with you that will help you figure out how to make your unhappy kitty a happy kitty again. Basically, letting her have her wet food again will be the first thing you'll want to do. And then, very slowly and carefully, you'll want to increase her wet food and cut down on the dry. Here is the information

http://www.catinfo.org/

http://holisticpetfood.wordpress.com/2007/12/22/why-your-cat-needs-canned-cat-food-the-catkins-diet/

http://www.blakkatz.com/dryfood.html

If I ever told you what one of mine started doing when I was trying to cut down on her food intake you would say, oh my God, we're so lucky our kitty is only doing this. Mine was declawed (her original owner had that done when kitty was 6 months old and went in to get spayed).

In short, our kitties have many ways to let us know they are not happy and all of them are far worse than what they can do with their claws when they are frustrated.

From your post I know you don't need to read this but there is every indication that the rest of the family does. They have no idea what they are talking about. So here

http://declaw.lisaviolet.com/

Please educate them. 

 

[just mike]

It is probably the change in her diet.  Violet posted some links you might benefit from.  Declawing the cat will most likely not alter the behavior of the cat trying to attack you.  There is another possibility although on the remote side from what you've described.  I do not know what the condition is called but my SIL had the sweetest cat ever and one day the cat just started attacking and clawing her.  This happened several times and finally my SIL wound up in the ER with severe cat bite wounds.  After a series of tests the vet found a hormone deficiency which apparently some cats develop.  Never heard of it before so I know nothing about it but it might be worth a call to the vet to see if they have.  The cat was given medication and everything got back to normal after that.
 

 

[bryce]

Thanks for those links.  The food suggestion makes a lot of sense because we just up and stopped giving her the wet food.  And we have a bowl of dry food that sits out 24/7 for her.  We figured dry food was best for her rather than wet food.  We'll try bringing back the wet food and taking up the dry food.  We've been giving her half a can of wet food with the dry by the way.

 

[minka]

I would definitely re-incorporate the wet food and cut back on the dry food and see what that does. If the behavior doesn't stop, it could be any number of issues making her lash out. A vet visit with a full blood panel would be the right way to go. But declawing is a HUGE NO-NO. Instead of scratches, your brother and mom will just get biten instead!

 

[emilymaywilcha]

Unfortunately, when people get this idea in their brains they need to get cats declawed for whatever reason, nothing will convince them better ways exist to solve the problem. It is like telling a woman who decided to abort her pregnancy, "Abortion is fetus murder." That woman will still want to abort her fetus anyway. People either choose to not believe it is cruel because it is important to them or are unwilling to believe others are stating facts, not opinions.

 

[ldg]

I'm sorry, Bryce, for derailing your thread a bit here to address Emily's comment, but comparing declawing with abortion is just so wrong, I'm basically left speechless here. Talk about a comparison of... apples and beef. This isn't even apples and oranges.

And as many of us have helped people understand that declawing is mutilation and cruel, and a number of us have contributed to our vets changing their policies towards declawing (providing people with informative brochures, both educating people about the process, the possible behavior impacts, and the many alternatives), making them sign something that says they've read and understand it before performing the procedure, and selling things like Soft Paws and providing the service of putting them on for a small fee (which is ongoing, because they need to be replaced!), I must vehemently disagree that "when people get this idea in their brains...nothing will convince them better ways exist." This may be true for some people, sometimes, but such a sweeping generalization simply is not accurate AT ALL.

 

[ldg]

Bryce, if you need help with educational materials on the declawing issue, let us know. :heart2:

 

[callista]

Yeah, wow, don't declaw. She'll just bite instead, and hard too. You'd much rather have kitty's claws in your skin than her teeth, believe me. Kitty teeth can create some pretty serious injuries--claws, especially in play, give superficial scratches and that's all.

But, if she does keep on doing this, a good way to keep her from hurting anyone is to clip her claws. Just clip off the sharp tips, about once a week or so. Blunt claws do very little damage in play, but can still be used for self-defense and climbing. At first you won't be able to get her to sit still for more than one or two claws, but she'll get used to it. Give her treats afterward, or groom her, or get out the catnip, or something she likes.

She does sound like she's tense, frustrated. If she behaved this way normally I wouldn't say that, but since this is a behavior change, it's significant. If she's anxious and on-edge all the time, she's more likely to get overstimulated and claw people for petting her. If you can't read her signals well enough, you'll get claws in the face. How good is your family at reading her signals? Can they tell when she's getting overstimulated? If they're a bit dense at reading cats' body language, you could tell them to watch for a twitching tail. That is a pretty good way to tell, though there's more to it than that--the general body posture, the way the whiskers and ears are pointed, the tension in the muscles--which is more subtle than tail twitches.

How about switching her to wet-food only? Wet food has a lot of water in it, and that makes it good for weight loss. For the moment, maybe you could just feed her enough for her to maintain her weight until she settles down a bit. You don't want to make her miserable just because she's putting on weight; and anyway, stress causes weight gain just by itself--at least in humans. No reason to think that mightn't apply to cats too.

 

[bryce]

She's always been like this, not nearly as bad though.  We've always had dry food out from day 1 and half a can of wet food in the morning for her.  Other than than dry food only left out so she could get it whenever she wanted.

She's always kinda been to herself though just not really attacked for no reason, just when you push her to far and such.

 

[minka]

Sounds like she's gotten tired of being pushed too far too many times...

 

[bryce]

We have noticed her calming down a bit since we gave her the wet food again, strange, but oh well lol.  Should we just give her a whole can in the morning and leave just a little bit of dry food in the bowl for the day or just take it up at this point?

 

[minka]

Half a can in the morning and half a can at night should be perfect.

 

[callista]

Isn't wet food a better diet food for a cat anyway? More protein, less filler; more water. Sounds like just what a cat needs to lose a little weight.

 

[amcm74]

I can tell you from experience, that changing a cat's diet is worse then someone hiding your chocolate during "that time of the month." I actually had a cat that got way to heavy. We put him on a diet and he was very demanding and vindictive about it. One would have thought he got on the internet and looked up "how to torment my humans" It got so bad I had a running update on my facebook to my friends to support me from giving into his fluffy demands.

 

[callista]

You poor thing Having to deal with an upset cat... I bet it was heartbreaking. And I can understand it, too. I mean, what is a diet, really? You're basically starving, forcing your body to consume itself to survive. It's not pleasant, however much you talk about it being healthy and all that. It's not a nice time for a cat. The food they do get should be as nutritious as possible, so that at least they aren't suffering from nutrient deficiency in addition to the calorie deficiency. That's why I keep talking about wet food as being better than dry for a cat on a diet--it's got less filler in it, usually; less indigestible corn, more of the stuff that kitty needs to keep her energy levels up. There *are* dry foods that are high quality enough, though.

The best way to lose weight both for humans and cats is to go very, very slowly. For humans--about half a pound a week, equivalent to about a 10% reduction in overall intake. I don't know what the ideal is for cats, but it can't be too much more than that. Otherwise they just lose energy, get irritable and hostile, generally start lashing out at the world because they're so miserable. You ever had a friend on a crash diet? Remember how miserable and moody they were? Times ten for the cat, because the cat has no idea that it's supposed to be for their health...

 

[minka]

The best way to lose weight both for humans and cats is to go very, very slowly. For humans--about half a pound a week, equivalent to about a 10% reduction in overall intake. I don't know what the ideal is for cats, but it can't be too much more than that. Otherwise they just lose energy, get irritable and hostile, generally start lashing out at the world because they're so miserable. You ever had a friend on a crash diet? Remember how miserable and moody they were? Times ten for the cat, because the cat has no idea that it's supposed to be for their health...

Cats can only safely lose 1-2% a week. :nod: