My parents' cat hates me. Any advice?

A visitor to the website stated that their parents' cat, Luna, has been raised in the family since she was a kitten and is now eight years old. Luna loves the person's mother, is ambivalent about the father but positively hates the person asking the question i.e. the child of the parents who we've not named.

This is not the cat in question. Barney was labelled inherently aggressive when he was not. Photo in public domain with words added.

The cat hisses and scratches at this person who thinks Luna hates her. But I think this is a bad attitude because domestic cats don't hate certain people for no reason. There would have to be a genuine and identifiable reason. Rather than 'hate' it is far more likely to be 'fear'. Luna is fearful of this person and become defensively aggressive. 

I think there are two possible reasons. The first one is that Luna is perhaps not that well socialised because judging by the description of Luna she is not entirely friendly because she doesn't care about "my dad" but she's not that bad with "my mum" and she hisses and scratches the child who appears to be an adult child by the way. So, Luna is not great within the family anyway. 

Secondly, cats can get very used to one or two people and it is possible that the person asking the question is not always at home and therefore the cat is not too familiar with that person and treats them somewhat as a stranger and is therefore fractious with them and slightly defensive which results in scratching and hissing.

To expand on that idea: sometimes cats do form an attachment to a person and they have difficulty interacting with or bonding with anybody else. That may be a factor in this instance. The person mentioned that Luna was raised since she was a kitten in the same home. Luna may be attached to the person who was most involved in that process. That particular person might not be around anymore leaving Luna in effect in an alien home which would be stressful leading to defensive aggression and the odd swipe in his as described.

The point though is that all domestic cats who are defensively aggressive can be eased into a state which is much calmer through allowing the cat to become familiarised with you. I'm suggesting that you can socialise yourself to this cat very gradually and the best way to achieve that is to play with the cat gently and for quite a long time and to do this regularly and routinely. Gradually you will find Luna becoming less nervous and less defensive. Play is the best way to socialise a cat to a person if they are at the other end of the cat tease.

I think this is a lot to do with socialisation as much as it is to do with chemistry between a particular cat i.e. Luna and a particular person, the father. I would work on socialisation through patient play until the cat becomes entirely familiar with the person asking the question and for advice. That individual needs to be socialised to Luna in the fullest extent and I feel that would resolve the matter. This is of course presuming that all the boxes have been ticked regarding mental and physical health.

Finally, the home environment may not be to the cat's liking. It should be calm and reassuring. Perhaps something is a barrier to creating that state of affairs.

Agitated cat owner - agitated cat

You can't have a calm and contented domestic cat companion if the owner, or to put that in a better way, the cat's guardian, is agitated and anxious. If the owner's mind is restless and incessantly worried it is very hard for that person to achieve a calm environment and an ambience within the home which is conducive to contentment in their domestic cat. 

And that is not in any way to criticise anybody. I know, like anybody else, how easy it is to have a mind which is not restful but overly anxious and racing sometimes. Panic attacks are on the horizon.

John Butler. Photo: His website.

I do believe that many people have anxiety problems because of the pressures of life. Life has become more complicated with the Internet compared to the relatively innocent days of the 1970s. Life is speeding up with technology, particularly artificial intelligence. The world is more febrile, I feel, particularly so with Donald Trump. 

It is calmer now under Biden but I sense that there is tension in the world, between on the one hand Russia and China and on the other hand America and her allies. A war is not unimaginable and it may be playing out already as a cyberwar. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has made matters considerably worse for many. Job and financial problems have been exacerbated. We are not out of it and will have to learn to live with it and any other new virus,

This background undermines stability and a settled mind. A lot of people have panic attacks and their lives are quite difficult to manage. Many people simply don't cope and succumb to alcoholism or drug abuse. Once again, I fully understand and am highly sympathetic to their mental health problems. It almost seems like the world is driving people to these problems.

But, set against this background, cat owners need to do their best to maintain a calm and balanced mind which feeds through to the ambience in which both they and their cat lives. Quiet calmness and stability backed up by great routines between the human cat caretaker and their cat fosters, very strongly, a happy cat.

And it is the ultimate goal of all cat owners to ensure that their cat is happy. Of course, there are many aspects to achieving this goal such as ensuring the cat is in good health and safe from injury and in the worst-case premature death. That's why people keep their cats indoors full-time and why that mode of cat caretaking is becoming more popular. It is also a lifestyle which emphasises the need to make the home environment enriched and calm.

But in this article, I would like to focus on the calm cat owner and how to achieve it. Each person will have their own way and many of them are already calm enough but if you suffer from anxieties and it is manifested in your behaviour it's going to be felt by your cat and in the environment generally.

I'll get to the point now: there's an old guy, a retired British farmer, John Butler, 84, has a YouTube channel in which he talks about meditation and how to calm the restless mind. He's become quite famous and was featured in The Times today which is why I am mentioning him here. I immediately felt the importance of what he says in the modern world which, I guess, is why he has become popular.

I do believe, too, that the default position for a domestic cat's state of mind tends towards being anxious for two reasons, (1) they are living in the human world which is inherently alien despite 10,000 years of domestication because the domestic cat is barely domesticated and (2) they have acute senses and are acutely aware of hostility and the need to survive which can ramp up the agitation levels.

The agitated cat owner is likely to have an agitated cat and in opposition to that the calm and balanced cat owner is likely to be living with a cat who feels the same way. Everyone can find their own way to calmness but it may be useful to take a look at this elderly man's YouTube channel to see whether you can glean one or two tips from his words.

Cat owners should aspire to creating a calm ambience for their cat packed with reassuring routines and interactions. John Butler's views may help.

Below are three rather obtuse quotes from him and below that is a video from his channel. Stay calm.

Butler's words of wisdom:

"Feel your feet on the ground-listen and look."

"In order to be what we are, we have to come out of what we are not."

"What is it like when a carrot is pulled from the ground? The ground is left behind. And the carrot is lifted into another realm. All the teaching is left behind."

P.S. It goes without saying that the human-to-human relationship can have a big impact on the home environment. Our relationships are vital to the wellbeing of our cat.

Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

Domestic cat bites off the end of her tail. Why?

The owner of this cat, Cleo, suggests that she plays with her tail because she was raised with dogs. The problem has deteriorated to the point where she growls and is more aggressive with her tail. She actually bit off the end off, which is self-mutilation and this cannot be normal. 

Kitten plays with tail. Photo: Warren Photographic published her with his express permission.

Perhaps a domestic cat might get into a habit of playing with their tail more often than normal and it may go wrong but I don't think a domestic cat can bite off the end of her tail unless something is wrong. I would suggest, therefore, that she has a mental health problem or she feels pain in her tail.

MENTAL CONFLICT

Firstly, she is in mental conflict or in a state of anxiety and is engaged in displacement activity. Displacement activity is when a cat does something which displaces their emotional state which is uncomfortable. The classic example of it is when a cat licks their nose. Humans do it when they bite their fingernails. Over grooming is also a form of displacement activity.

Sometimes the cat's owner may intervene in the wrong way, perhaps in an indelicate way which exacerbates the situation. And if a tail has been damaged in this way it may also exacerbate the situation because there would be pain. The tail may have to be amputated. The underlying mental condition would remain, however. They would need to be an assessment of the cat's mental state i.e. mental conflict causing this 'compulsive disorder'. And the pain would have to be managed. 

A barrier to biting the tail would have to be introduced e.g. a collar.

A veterinarian might prescribe mind altering drugs to calm the cat and also the owner can do a lot by creating regular routines and providing daily interactions. I think a lot of this sort of problem is due to anxieties which are difficult to detect.

BEHAVIOURAL

A second possibility but one which is probably much less likely would be that a cat has become too aggressive when playing with their tail. It is commonplace for a cat to play with their tail. I think that it can often be due to boredom and they have this natural hunting instinct so they hunt their own tail. It might develop into something which is too aggressive causing self-mutilation. If this is the cause then it is relatively harmless but once again a way out of it would be for the human guardian to engage with their cat more often in play and to ensure that their cat was fully stimulated.

PAIN

A third possibility would be pain in her tail. There should be an attempt to alleviate it. There would have to be a full veterinary assessment to look for conditions such as neurologic diseases and dermatologic disorders. Animals do try and resolve pain by nibbling and biting and when it gets worse, they may end up self-mutilating. Along that way of thinking, there appears to be three overall possibilities. 

CONCLUSION

In conclusion the three possibilities are (1) mental conflict (2) overaggressive play (3) disease causing pain and discomfort.

P.S. I am not a vet just a concerned cat owner.

Does Royal Canin Calm work?

Yes, Royal Canin Calm does work. I can verify this because I have tried it out on my cat. He does not need calming but I wanted to try it out because on occasions he can be a little bit hyperactive and I wanted to see whether this took the edge of his behaviour. It did.

My cat chilled out!

However, I do not let him eat Royal Canin Calm exclusively. Far from it, in fact. I mix a little bit in with his standard dry food which he grazes on during the night so this calming dry food is only a relatively small part of his diet. Despite that relatively small amount it still has an effect.

I can clearly see the difference. He looks a little bit more chilled out and perhaps it is fair to say that he sleeps a bit more. This is exactly how I like him so I will probably continue with this mix of standard dry cat food which for me and him it is Hills Oral Care.

Clearly it is going to depend on the individual cat as to how this product works and I suspect that in some cats it won't work as well as in other cats. However, it is definitely worth a try if you're cat is noticeably anxious. And it certainly is applicable in times of general stress such as when fireworks are being set off or when moving home.

How does the product work? They say they use hydrolysed milk protein "which contains a peptide that regulates stress, and L-tryptophan, which can increase serotonin (the happy hormone) levels.

How do peptides regulate stress? There is an online study which appears to be on the subject. It is called "Stress peptides sensitise fear circuitry to promote passive coping". The study is completely unintelligible to me!

Another study published on the Eureka Alert website which came out of Northwestern University Medical School and San Diego State University says that "a peptide found in the brain and in the body can reduce both hormonal and behavioural manifestations of stress."

They say that in people who are depressed there are abnormal levels of this peptide. This discovery may help doctors diagnose and treat depression and other stress-related illnesses.

In what appears to be an animal test, they administered the peptide prior to exposure to stress and it significantly reduced levels of corticotropin or ACTH , (by 50%), a hormone that plays a major role in controlling the body's response to stress.

Don't do anything bad which your cat will remember

In my experience, domestic cats have a very good memory for bad experiences. Something you may have done which frightened him or her will stick in their minds for a very long time. In fact they may never forget it. You might, for example, accidentally walk on your cat's paw because he's right behind you. Or you might lose your temper one day and shout at your cat. It is likely that your cat will remember these events. It may alter his behaviour. It may create a bit of doubt in his mind. It certainly won't help the relationship. 

Zen cat. Photo: nosenekoshiro (Instagram).

The worst thing you can do is to aggressively slap your cat or shout at him because he's annoyed you. I can understand the desire to do this if you're stressed for whatever reason, and at the moment there are good reasons to be stressed with the coronavirus crisis. It's a particular moment when cats might be the victim of domestic violence. It only takes a moment when tempers are lost and the domestic cat is shouted at or abused even in a very minor way for that cat to remember it. 

It's not a deliberate or conscious memory. Your cat isn't saying I'm gonna remember that and make him pay for it. It's just a mental scar which sits there in the back of the cat's brain and alters his behaviour at least potentially. 

Of course the impact depends upon the individual cat. Each cat reacts differently but it is my belief that there is a level of anxiety in domestic cats which is higher than people believe. Or let's put it this way: millions of cats are very relaxed and content but it doesn't take much to introduce anxiety into their lives. 

This is because they live in a human environment to which they adapt but it is often not the best of environments for a domestic cat who is wild at heart by which I mean in terms of character and behaviour they are a short step from their wild cat ancestors. Always seek to create a calm and friendly environment for your cat. It is an ongoing mission of the concerned cat caretaker/guardian.