Has anyone had any kind of fear of cats when they were very young/ever had dreams where you were frightened by either domestic or large cats/been startled when you're half-conscious and your cat enters the room/etc.?

 

I have never ever been afraid of cats until I got my Oliver. His attacking has gotten better...but he used to have us pinned up on the kitchen counter...that's how scared we were.

 

My parents divorced when I was little so Dad and I moved to my Grandparents farm to help Grandpa farm. We had all kinds of puddy cats. I think I mentioned three in particular before. Morris, Colorado and Blue Sky. They were from the same litter. One day my Grandma's sister stopped by and us 3 for some reason were out in the barn. This is while the cows were outside. I saw Morris sleeping in the hay and started petting him. Grandma got after me to get away from him. Morris was dead. I don't know why he died. I was only like 6 years old. I don't even remember if it was winter or anything. He was curled up like a kitty sleeping and had just...died.

So, my point in saying all that, from that night on I would wake up scared because Morris was either standing at the foot of my bed or was looking in my window at me. 8O

I know Morris wasn't in my room or anything, it's just my mind was playing tricks or I would dream about him. :?

 

Yes, I dreamnt that I was being attacked by a tiger & I had this whip in my hand in case he were to attack me 8O .

 

I remember when I was 2 or 3, we were living in an apartment with a window that opened into a fenced back yard, and the window had a little stepladder down to the yard. One hot summer day, I was taking a nap, and my father had gone to the corner (about 100 feet) to mail a letter. For whatever reason, I woke up and toddled into the kitchen just as the neighbor's enormous orange tomcat came strolling through the open window. I went running out of the house and down the street crying, barefooted in my little undershirt and knickers, screaming "Daddy, daddy...there's a kitty in the house!" I don't know why I was so scared, probably because I'd just woken up and didn't have any real experience with animals. Anyhow, we went home and made friends with kitty, who was sitting on the kitchen counter, completely unimpressed. :lol:

My big MC almost took my eye out one day when I was about 6 or 7 (my fault, I patted her at a bad time and got a big heaping faceful of redirected aggression), and it took me a while to get over that. I still have a little tiny part of a scar in my right eyebrow, and a much better sense of when it's a bad idea to approach a cat.

We have one big declawed shelter guy that I'm really careful around, because he gets absolutely mental when he's upset by the dogs barking, and he's acted like a potential face-biter with other people.

Oh, and Assumpta is truly scary when there are kids around. :roll:

 

I've never been afraid of a cat until Joey. The two cats my family has can be mean, as cats are, but since we raised them from kittens we know how they work. And they're basically wusses.

But Joey... he's about two and I just adopted him. When he gets spazzy, he can get vicious, and for a while there I had NO idea what would set him off. He'd just get really mad and glare at me, and then attack me. It was freaking scary! Especially after I got hurt the first time, I started getting really nervous around him.

Luckily now we seem better and I'm not nearly as scared as him as I was, I can now grab him behind the head when he starts getting attitude and remove my extremities from his reach.

 

See my post under this thread:

http://www.catforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=5605&highlight=