Maybe they’re just waiting to see if you stop breathing so they can eat you.
Quite the opposite. I made each of them try to open a can of Fancy Feast Classic. The prize was a pound of Party Mix Catnip flavor. They couldn’t do it. So, they need me more than I need them. Cats can be reasoned with. That’s why I like them so much.
I got my (approx 4 yr old Maine Coon, female, spayed) just over 3 years ago. She was raised indoor/outdoor, but after letting her run the 'hood a couple of times, I switched her to indoor-only.
On her first outing, I saw her encounter one of the local toms - friendly sniff, no conflict.
Since she is limited to the indoors, she growls/howls, goes into full threat mode if she sees another cat in the yard.
(yes, she is nocturnal. behavior not always appreciated).
So yes, they will defend territory - never had the chance to have a cat nearby when threatened, so do not know if it is personal.
The clip of the cat attacking the babysitter shows something I’m beginning to think is nearly universal among mammals: the recognition and protection of the young of any species. Would the cat have attacked had it been an adult which had screamed at the broken glass
When I was little, we had a cat that would get between us kids and mom when she was mad at us. If she wanted to spank one of us, she had to put the cat out first.
One of our cats did this the other day. I was at my PC station and he was sitting under it near my feet (which he never does). I looked down and there was a huge wolf-spider just next to my foot. I think the cat was waiting for it to walk on me to see the reaction/heart attack.
A few times I’ve seen the same cat get between our 5 year-old and other kids who are visiting and start getting a bit agro and he will always try to get into the boys bedroom to check on them at night - though that could just be finding a good bed-warmer.
When I was a kid, my aunt started tickling my toddler sister, to the point where she was screaming. The house cat came running and kicked her (my aunt’s) ass. Claws and all.
When our daughter MilliCal was a baby, our cat Maggie adopted her as her own, sleeping at the foot of her crib (when she wasn’t sleeping IN the crib. To this day I don’t know how she got in when we had the cover in place). If MiliCal cried, Maggie came and got us.
When she was a toddler, the neighbor’s dog came over while Maggie was outside. MilliCal petted the eager dog, but Maggie saw it as a threat. He hackles rose, her ears went back, and she unhesitatingly attacked a dog that must have been ten times her weight and bulk. Her one paw struck repeatedly, claws out. She chased that dog all over the yard and down the street.
Darned right cats can protect their owners.
So far, the behavior seems limited to the very young - ever see such behavior in defense of an adult?
I wonder what it is with cats and small children?
I remember one time when my son was very little, he started pulling on the cats tail. I’m sitting on the bed, the cat is sitting right next to me, and my baby boy is standing next to the bed.
I’ve told this kid many times to NOT pull kitty’s tail. This particular time I figured: "Ya’ know what? I’m gonna go ahead and let him pull this cat’s tail and let him see for himself what the end result will be. I felt safe doing this since I was sitting right there next to the cat. If the cat gets too rough, I can pull him off.
So my son is pulling away at the cat’s tail and the cat is being uncharacteristically patient with him. Until finally, he had enough. But instead of lunging for my son, the damn cat went for me and gave me a good scratch on my arm! Almost as if he were trying to tell me “Control your fucking kid!”
In his autobiography, Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger tells a story of a cat his mom had when Arnold was 10, Mooki, who attacked him after he raised his hand against his mother, literally clawing at little Arnie’s face 
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Similarly have you ever seen a Beware of Cat sign? I haven’t.
My cat has defended the chihuahua in the family from another dog, this surprised me as they never seemed to like one another.
I had a medical event and the paramedics came to our house in the middle of the night. The five guys had me all hooked up to monitors and such, but my cat was right there glued to my hip the whole time.
He didn’t know what was going on of course, but he was right there for me. I’ll never forget that.
In my experience, cats (or at least females) will protect their kittens before their owner . . . even if the “kitten” is a miniature teddy bear Christmas ornament.
And I once had a blind person in my living room, along with his seeing-eye dog. The cat, normally a mild-mannered pussycat, sat on the steps overlooking the room, continuously growling at the dog. As soon as I petted the dog, indicating that the dog wasn’t a threat, the growling stopped.
Our now-indoor-only shelter cat is very gregarious and friendly to everybody who comes over, sort of like a dog. She greets us at the door when we come home. She greets guests at the door when they come over. She follows us around the house whenever we move from room to room, hops in the laps of strangers, and always wants to be in the middle of the action when there are a bunch of people over. She ALWAYS wants to be picked up, held, wants to sleep in your lap, etc. She loves nothing more than physical contact. In short, her social behavior doesn’t seem to be very cat-like. There have even been occasions where she stayed with one or two small dogs for a few days. There was never nastiness, and she was generally pretty okay with it.
She will defend my wife at the drop of a hat. The first time we realized this was a few years ago, after we had had the cat for about six months. I was putting my coat on at the base of our stairs and, as I was hurriedly putting my arm through the sleeve, I accidentally bopped my wife in the nose. She yelped, and the cat immediately came flying from out of nowhere upstairs and ninja-kicked me in the neck. NinjaKat executed a sort of sideways backflip and landed back on the stairs - and just glared at me. I had never seen such a nasty look on her face. The wife and I just stood there, dumbfounded. We approached the cat and she just wanted to be consoled. We chalked it up to a one-off ‘cats is weird’ experience.
We were wrong. The cat is consistently defensive of her. My wife is a bit of a klutz, and it’s now developed to the point where if she hits her shin on the coffee table or her elbow on the nightstand and cries out, the cat will rush in and promptly attack the body part that she is favoring - hilarity ensues. The cat is smart enough to understand that the arm/leg is hurting my wife, but can’t quite connect the dots on the whole ‘that’s attached to me!’ concept.
She must figure I can take care of myself, because despite the fact that I spend far more time with her than my wife does, the cat has never once come running to my aid when I stub my toe or otherwise injure myself. It may sound like she doesn’t like me, but that’s not the case at all. It will be interesting to see what happens when we start having kids; I often wonder if her defensive instincts will become focused on the kids, if her loyalty will stay with my wife, or if she will become protective of all of them.
Yes. Another of our cats, Clarence*, once defended my wife, Pepper Mill, fiercely. We had a medical emergency late one night, and I called 911. The fireman came to our room, where my stricken wife lay in bed. Clarence immediately jumped up on her, faced this intruder, raised his hackles, and hissed at him so hard that the fireman backed off. (Clarence was a Maine Coon, and BIG) Pepper Mill, despite being in pain and, as we thought, in some danger, had to laugh, and called him off, at which point they could examine her.
Fortunately, what looked like a serious condition and emergency turned out not to be, and everything turned out alright. But Clarence had shown his colors, protecting his mistress.
*Like most of our cats, he was rescued from a shelter. He had only one eye, and with his coloring and Maine Coon’s mane, looked somewhat lion-like, so I suspect he was called Clarence the One-Eyed Lion in imitation of Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion, from the 1965 film that was the basis for the old TV series Daktari.
I had one cat protect another cat from two dogs one time. Hector was the bigger cat, and had had a health scare a few days earlier. He was out on the lawn relaxing one evening when some kids went by walking their dogs, who decided to bark at Hector. Tiny little Alberta Kat went flying out the front door (which was open as it was a nice night) and went right at the larger of the two dogs, in full-on Mama Cat Mode.
Even after I grabbed her, she still struggled and hissed at me to let her at the dogs.
And like yours, Hector and Alberta never really liked each other.
I’ve posted this before but this is the hilarious story of the Attack Cat.