Feline Aggression Associated with Human Interaction

Key Points

In order to prevent aggression owners need to understand how to interpret basic feline modes of communication. Feline hyperaesthesia syndrome is an important differential in cases where cats are showing unpredictable aggression in association with owner interaction. Identify maximum duration of contact the cat will tolerate. Contact duration must not exceed this amount during training, and should generally be restricted to less than half the maximum duration. List the tactile interactions that the cat will and will not tolerate. Condition the cat to associate the already well tolerated interactions with the delivery of a food reward. Once the cat shows positive signs of anticipation during these sessions then the client may proceed down the list towards the less well-tolerated types of contact. Recognise signs of rising aggression and irritation so that training does not provoke an attack. Play and other interactions should be substituted for touch until the cat is genuinely confident to be handled.

Introduction

It is common for owners to comment on minor aggression problems when handling or restraining their cats. This is most often associated with inappropriate handling or misunderstanding of the cat's communication.

There has been some debate as to the possible motivation for these sudden assaults, but evidence suggests that a significant proportion of cats that appear to tolerate human contact in fact find it stressful. It has been suggested that the cat’s threshold for tolerance of handling is reduced due to a lack of habituation as a kitten or as the result of an internal conflict between adult feline behavioural responses and the perpetuated juvenile responses of a domestic cat, or that there is a fundamental mismatch between normal affiliative behaviour between cats and the expectations of their owners. Greetings between cats are often restricted to a ‘tail up’ approach accompanied with a trill or chirrup and blinking eye contact. After this, cats may sit close to each other for a period of time, and only in a minority of situations is there any physical contact such as allorubbing or allogrooming. When there dis physical contact, it is often very brief.

Owners often interpret any approach by a cat as a request to be handled or picked up, and are then surprised when the cat struggles to get away or tries to bite or scratch. There is also often a delay between initial contact from the owner and a bite; the cat may appears to be tolerating, or even enjoying, physical interaction before then suddenly becoming hostile. Many owners will also attempt to sustain contact beyond the tolerance of the cat, holding onto it as it tries to escape. The combined effect of this inappropriate owner behaviour is that the cat may become wary of getting close to the owner, or allowing physical contact.

There is a significant crossover between this form of aggression and others, due to the mixture of emotional motivation that may be present:

• Fear: Resulting from experience punishment or mishandling.
• Play: Especially where play continues to a point at which it becomes frustrating for the cat. Usually claws remain sheathed and biting is inhibited, but may still be painful.

Prevalence and Risk Factors

A spanish study of 336 cats referred to a behavioural clinic found that 17.2% involved a complaint relating to aggression toward people; 43.1% of human directed aggression involved play, and 39.6% involved petting, with a significant overlap. However, referral populations such as those surveyed in that study are likely to be biased. A Brazilian survey of cat owners recruited from a general clinic population identified a similar pattern of eliciting situations for aggression, but with a very high overall prevalence of 49.5%. Those authors reported that the commonest situations that elicited aggression toward the owner were when the cat was petted or put onto a lap, during play, when startled, when observing an unfamiliar animal, when in the presence of unfamiliar people and when protecting food or territory. Aggression during petting and when put on a lap were the most common. Aggression was associated with an early traumatic event and outside access. Cats that did not like being stroked or did not get on well with other animals that they had contact with were more likely to show aggression in general. However, a range of other factors, including age, sex, neuter status, accommodation, origin, and social contact with people and other cats were not significantly associated with increased aggression. However, the population of aggressive cats in this study was small (107 cats). There is also evidence that a significant proportion of cats become stressed by human contact even though they appear to tolerate it. These authors also suggested that cats that found human contact stressful were better able to avoid it when living in a group with other cats. Aggression due to human interaction is probably a common but under-presented problem that owners rarely seek help for, probably because it is easier to accommodate the cat's behaviour by reducing interaction with it.

Prevention

Owners need to understand how to interpret basic feline modes of communication:

• Normal greeting behaviour between cats
• The lack of importance of physical contact during greetings
• Facial and body postures that indicate the cat’s mood and intention

This knowledge should be applied so that greetings between owners and their cats are sensitive to normal feline ethology and expectations. They also need to understand the effect of certain kinds of handling:

• Fear or alarm caused when a cat is picked up and thereby loses its ability to engage an escape response
• Holding and preventing the cat from getting away from contact is frustrating and alarming to it

Diagnosis

Aggression is often seen when the person reciprocates the cat’s initial greeting or when the cat is approached. Until this point the cat may be showing affiliative behaviour such as slow blinking or tail up, and will often show a relaxed body posture. The owner describes the cat’s behaviour as unpredictable and suggests that the cat suddenly enters a state of confusion or panic as the interaction proceeds. The cat appears to enjoy a brief amount of physical contact but then suddenly turns aggressive without warning, often grabbing the owner’s arm with its front legs and raking with the back ones. After the incident the cat will often move away and begin to exhibit displacement behaviour, such as grooming. This indicates that the cat is experiencing an amount of unresolved emotional conflict. The lack of predictability often relates to inadequate ability to correctly interpret changes in the cat’s body language as it is approached or handled, combined with the owner’s expectation that the cat ought to understand that the approach is intended to be friendly.

A complication of this form of aggression is that a substantial proportion of the cats with this problem may be suffering from undiagnosed feline hyperaesthesia syndrome; displaying the classic signs of rippling skin and hypersensitivity to touch. Feline hyperaesthesia syndrome is therefore an important differential in cases where cats are showing unpredictable aggression in association with owner interaction and a multi-disciplinary approach involving dermatology and behavioural medicine should be encouraged. Other causes of pain should also be ruled out.

Treatment

Underlying medical problems should be investigated and treated. The pattern of interaction between owner and cat must be altered:

• Train the owner to give eye contact and vocal greetings instead of physical contact or handling. The owner must resist the temptation to pick the cat up.
• The owner must also be able to identify early signs of aggression and irritation, such as growling vocalisation, tail swishing and ears folded back.
• Identify the maximum amount (duration) and type of contact that the cat will tolerate before becoming aggressive. Owners should restrict physical contact to a maximum duration that is less than half of this value, in order to minimise aggressive responses.
• Introduction of physical contact should be planned, systematic and increased in response to the cat’s improved behaviour.
• The owner should substitute appropriate play for times when they might otherwise try to handle or cuddle the cat.

Owners may be reluctant to comply with these demands but this is made easier if the ethological basis is explained, and an analogy is drawn with acceptable human greetings in different cultures. Hugging and kissing are the norm in many societies, even when introduced to strangers, whereas in the parts of Northern Europe, especially the UK, this would be considered socially uncomfortable. Following the social conventions enables the individual to fit into a social group without causing offence or stress. This is also so with cats; forcing excessive physical contact is against normal feline social norms.

Cats need to learn about social interaction with humans, and be conditioned to tolerate it. The situation is compounded once the cat has been forced to put up with interaction that it does not like, and this creates negative associations with the approach of a person, which must be overcome before touch contact can be reintroduced.

Fortunately, clients who change the character of their interactions with their cats will often be rewarded with increased trust and a greater amount of affiliative behaviour so that future compliance is usually high. However, it is important that they do not attempt to re-establish a tactile relationship with the cat as soon as it begins to become more approachable, as this will undermine trust and the cat will regress rapidly.

Interactions should be limited to very short, planned sessions and always terminated before agitation begins. The owner needs to learn how to read body language and predict when tension is increasing. Tail twitching, flattening of the ears, stiffening of the shoulders and legs and dilatation of pupils are all signs of increasing arousal and risk of aggression. If the cat begins to show aggression during handling it is important to avoid touching the cat’s abdomen, even if it rolls onto its back or side. Severe lacerations are possible if a hand or foot is rapidly pulled away whilst the cat is latched onto it. Struggling and sudden movements of the hand also drive the cat to hold on tighter or to bite more deeply.

Whilst it may be painful, the most appropriate response is to remain still and make no noise. It is therefore advisable for owners to wear protective gloves and thick sleeves during treatment sessions. The primary aim of treatment should be to gradually work towards the situation where the cat is on the owner’s lap unrestrained. Once this has been achieved it should be possible to gradually condition the cat to accept increasing levels of restraint and handling, and eventually to accept being lifted from the ground, but this may take some considerable time.

Food rewards may be used during training, but cats are rarely motivated to work for their daily food ration and the treats that are used will need to be of sufficient value so that they genuinely represent a reward. Owners may need to experiment with a wide range of food rewards in order to discover what the cat really likes. Access to the chosen reward is restricted to training sessions alone, as this helps to increase their perceived value.

The first step is to condition a positive association with the presence of a person by offering a food reward without any request for physical interaction. As treatment progresses the cat should be rewarded for permitting increasingly direct contact from the person. It may help for the owner to be given a listed sequence of behaviours,which should be rewarded. The handler must not progress to the next step unless the cat shows no signs of arousal or distress.

A typical sequence of actions might include:

• Approaching person
• Sitting on furniture close to person
• Sitting unrestrained on person’s lap
• Tolerating brief stroking along the back
• Tolerating brief restraint
• Tolerating and ultimately accepting increasing amounts of stroking and restraint
• Tolerating being lifted briefly off the floor
• Tolerating and ultimately accepting being picked up

This is another condition in which a permanent change in owner behaviour is vital for continued success. Clients should be taught to notice and appropriately respond to normal feline greetings:

• Eye contact with slow blinking
• Trills
• Sitting close to the person without touching
• Tactile contact

Owners should be taught to reciprocate these kinds of greetings in a similar manner, for example calling the cat’s name in a high-pitched voice, or making slow blinking eye contact. They must realise that the cat that sits in close proximity has already made its greeting and may not, on this occasion, have any desire to be touched. Physical contact should generally be restricted to times when the cat initiates it.

Prognosis

The prognosis for these cats is usually good as long as owners do not allow themselves to relapse into inappropriate behaviour as the cat becomes more affiliative. Owners must regard the changes in their own behaviour towards the cat as permanent and not merely a temporary means of winning over or convincing the cat. The prognosis is guarded to poor if the cat’s attacks have been serious and unanticipated, such as when a person is attacked whilst walking past the cat without any intention to touch it.

References

Also see:

Overview of Feline Aggression