my hissing cat

Posted on February 4, 2023

I have two cats I adopted from a friend. Kitty is a black and white calico, and Professor is an orange tabby. Although they occasionally had small conflicts, until this past spring their typical behavior involved cuddling and grooming each other and generally being adorable together.

One day, seemingly out of the blue, Professor hissed at Kitty, and then the two of them chased and yowled. Not like normal chasing and yowling. No. It was more like chasing and howling associated with the bowels of hell. It was terrible. For about six months or longer, this behavior happened fairly regularly, sometimes being the default dynamic when the two cats were together and sometimes being an unusual and momentary conflict.

When it was at first a consistent dynamic, I did what any current day pet owner does when an animal behaves strangely: I turned to the google to help me deal with an extremely stressful and disconcerting situation. And I discovered, much to my surprise, that Professor’s hissing behavior was not aggressive as I had assumed but was, rather, a defensive behavior, signaling that he felt threatened in some way.

Huh.

Furthermore, even though we might just think, “Let the animals figure it out without human intervention,” my friend Google said the behavior was more likely to worsen and lead to injury if I ignored it.

I followed lots and lots of advice to address the situation, and over time what worked was a combination of interventions. (If you don’t have cats in this predicament, you can just skip this paragraph because it’s really not the point of why I’m writing.) Professor has an eye pressure issue that was likely causing pain, so I dealt with that. I ordered pheromone diffusers to promote calm feelings. And I installed baby gates so Professor didn’t have to worry about Kitty being in his space. I did more things, too. It’s ridiculous the number of things I tried, honestly, to the point of being embarrassing. But it’s hard to feel peaceful if the cats are hissing and yowling, so I kept doing what I could so they would be happy and healthy and get along more often than not.

Why am I taking the time to write about all this cat stuff? It’s not because I’m a crazy cat lady, although a few people have begun to describe me in such a way.

It’s because it helped for me to understand Professor’s behavior as defensive. My initial framing positioned Professor as a bully and Kitty as the victim of Professor’s seemingly irrational and unpredictable wrath. That framing was not going to help me improve the situation. Instead, I needed to understand that Professor felt threatened so I could check his physical health and make sure he had an environment that felt safe to him. That way I protected both him and Kitty.

Kitty has seemed sad and lonely to me during the times when Prof has been volatile, so I’ve also given her extra attention. Maybe I’m projecting and she doesn’t care at all when he’s grouchy, but I figure I should be extra nice to her, the one who appears to be an innocent victim of Prof’s aggression, to whatever degree I can.

That’s it. Those are my insights. Sometimes the ones who are acting out are doing so because they feel threatened; dealing with the situation may thus involve helping the aggressive one’s environment shift in several ways to create a “safe mode” or “safe abode” or whatever. And dealing with the aggressive one does’t mean the recipient of the aggression is ignored. Rather, being there for them and making sure they feel safe and cared for matters, too.

That’s what my cats have made me think about this past year. How to move from a stressful situation full of discord and yowling to a nurturing environment with cuddles and peace.

Now I just need to figure out how to keep the cat hair from getting everywhere…..