We have had two cats for over 15 years and they have been living together for that long. Over the past two weeks the male has attacked the female for no “apparent” reason. This has never happened before. The female would just be walking across the room and the male will jump up and run over to her, grab her by the neck and bring her to the ground. Both animals have been fixed for over 12 years. Is this common for the age and sex of the two cats? Any help greatly appreciated. It appears that after each attack, the male goes over by the door requesting to be let outside.
It sounds almost like he’s got kitty Alzheimer’s. Hie him to the vet to rule out stuff like kidney disease and such, and see what they have to say.
There can be many reasons for this behavior and your best bet is to ask your vet and/or an animal behaviorist (your vet should be able to recommend one).
One possibility is redirected aggression. If something else is pissing the cat off but it cannot get at the source of its problems it may take it out on something else…in this case your other cat. Given that it wants to go outside seems like it might want at the source of its ‘problem’.
I saw this in one of my cats. We lived on the second floor of a three story walk-up. Squirrels (or maybe just one squirrel…I don’t know) would sit on the ledge outside one of our windows. The cat would go bonkers with the squirrel literally a fraction of an inch away from it but unable to get at it. I thought it was remarkable that teh squirrel woud sit so placidly with a predator so near but it did it. I would swear the squirrel did it to tease our cat as it did this on a regular basis but then again maybe it just liked that spot. After our cat would go nuts about the squirrel it would chase our other cat around for a few minutes. However, none of it seemed overly aggressive to the other cat (just chasing and a sway here and there…no biting or other injurious behavior). In the winter when the squirrel was gone the cat wouldn’t engage in that behavior.
I’ve had the same type of experience as Whack a mole. Only one of my cats does the attacking, and I notice it has been occurring more often lately. This can be attributed to having more cats being let out of doors (I never let mine out) and perhaps one of the strays is in heat.
Over the winter, my female elderly cat had a brain tumour that we were unaware of. She just seemed to be acting elderly. Well, the younger male started randomly following her around and sometimes roughly wrestling with her, which was unusual. After the fact, we wonder if maybe the other cats could sense something wrong with her.
A vet visit is in order if you cannot otherwise explain the behaviour.