Feline Aggression Associated with Human Interaction

Key Points

Introduction

It is not uncommon for owners to report that their cat is perfectly friendly at a distance but is prone to showing aggressive behaviour in association with close physical contact or restraint.

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.
• Resentment of contact: Owners pick the cat up or force contact with it.

Some cats will initiate interaction with their owners and then suddenly bite and attack after the person reciprocates contact. Immediately prior to the incident the cat appears to be enjoying physical interaction. There has been some debate as to the possible motivation for these sudden assaults. It has been suggested that the cat’s threshold for tolerance of handling is reduced either 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. Certainly the greeting behaviour of cats is at odds with that of their owners. Greetings between cats are often restricted to a ‘tail up’ approach accompanied with a trill or chirrup and blinking eye contact. Only in a minority of these encounters do cats actually make physical contact; in most cases they will simply sit close to each other for a period. Owners often misinterpret the initial feline greeting behaviour as an invitation for physical contact and it is possible that this is offensive or irritating to the cat, especially if it is picked up and carried by the owner against its will. Many owners will also attempt to sustain contact beyond the tolerance of the cat, holding onto it as it tries to get away. 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.

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 is to 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. So it is 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 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 important to 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 it’s 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.

Summary of Treatment - Aggression Related to Human 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 [see list].
• 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.
• The owner should be taught how to 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.

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.