Help! My cat just attacked me!

[Heidi n Q]

Aerohip and April, do a Google-search and read up on "Feline Redirected Aggression" and its' behavior and triggers.

Here is a good article at LittleBigCat: Little Big Cat

[catloverami]

I've found that orange/red tabbies can have "trigger tempers". No all are like that of course. I dunno, maybe that red-hair thing.

[~Siameseifuplz~]

Did he even see that you were there? It's possible you startled him and because you startled him with what is usually a threat he decided to act first, think later. Since he had no idea what was hissing/growling at him until after he had already attacked he didn't have time to realize "oh that's my owner, she always does this, I know it doesn't mean anything from her", he just decided to err on the side of caution and defend himself without knowing whether or not it was really necessary.

So yes, in the future, refrain from hissing, growling. Try chirping or trilling instead.

[April0684]

Heidi- Thank you I read that article and it was very interesting. I am now thinking that is what was going on with my cat.

[Heidi n Q]

I'm glad you found it helpful. Redirected Aggression is a very funny thing, it can have so many different triggers and so many different forms of expression that vary from cat-to-cat and from situation-to-situation.

When I try to describe it, I try to help people visualize a cat who *knows* about its' world; everything just so and behaving in predictable ways. Then something happens that is scary, but the cat doesn't know exactly *what* scared them; loud noise, strange smell, trapped in a toy or thing ... and because they have these immediate, highly charged, emotionally intense feelings of fear ... they attack the first thing they see because *they* aren't feeling normal so *nothing* in their world (right at that moment) is normal and it is almost as if they are trying to scare the scary-thing away to bring their normal back but it generally winds up having the complete opposite effect because it is *not* rational thought and only adds to the strange and fearful trigger. Sort of self-fulfilling and circular, you know?

[Janis]

Yup. Our favorite, Midnight, indoor-outdoor, formerly a kitten-stray, who was loving with us and would normally not harm his litter-box-mate, would become a wild & scary thing if another cat came up on the porch, and would attack anything that moved. His litter-box-mate would literally melt away hoping to make it before being noticed, (Slate hated violence, and never got used to having dead mice-presents, etc deposited on our porch) and I would go & put boots on till he calmed down so he wouldn't attack my (moving) feet.

Once, (and only once) outside, I made the mistake of approaching him from behind to pick him up (he normally loved being held), when he had just had a fight, was coming home, but suddenly turned to go back toward the direction of the fight. (The other cat was up a tree). I have a couple of scars to this day on the back of my hand where he lashed out, still in attack mode. As I said, he was a loving cat except when aggressive toward another cat, at which time he became monster cat. Glad to know this is somewhat normal.