About a month ago, my boss gave in to temptation and adopted a cat for our office. Mookie is a beautiful black and white male (neutered), about 2 years old and a bruising 18 pounds, who had been left at a shelter when his original family moved away. He had previously been adopted twice from the shelter, and returned twice. (Apparently, the first adopter wanted to make a barn cat of Mookie, but Mookie wanted to be an indoor cat, so no dice. The second adopter returned Mookie, saying that his wife and daughter were too afraid of the cat - something about shutting themselves in the basement to keep the cat away.) The shelter was afraid that we too would have a problem with him, but the first couple of weeks went very well, with Mookie being just adorable and playing with everyone. We figured the other folks just hadn’t been patient enough with a young cat.
Now… as much as we thought the second family sounded a little nuts, we’re beginning to understand the issue better. Mookie is, without a doubt, an attention whore. When he first got here, there were about five people that he could visit through the day to get his attention fix. For various reasons, at the moment it’s frequently just one or two of us in the office, so what might have been an occasional nudge or meow for a petting or some play becomes near-constant badgering. He will sit on the desk right in front of you, or (a favorite) crouch on top of a PC tower or bookshelf like Snoopy doing his vulture impersonation, and he won’t leave until you acknowledge him.
If he were just a lap cat, no big deal - I can function with a cat in my lap a good part of the day (no wisecracks, please). But when he doesn’t get the amount of attention he wants (and boy, does he want a lot), he begins to bite and claw - and not gently, either. For example, from a perch he will swipe at my face with claws fully extended; if I go to pick him up for the purposes of putting him back on the floor, he will twist around to bite me. If he’s on the floor already, he will rear up and dig his claws into my leg, or he will attack my ankles with both claws and teeth. One of the other women has had some luck getting him to back off by grabbing the scruff of his neck, but the only way I can shoo him is by tapping his nose with a manila folder a few times. Even when we do spend time with him, and he seems happy and content, he will suddenly turn into psycho-kitty, ears back and tail lashing, and start biting and clawing. He’s already bitten my boss on the lip that way, and it seems like more of the same is in store unless we find a way to get him out of this behavior.
Does anyone have any suggestions for modifying his behavior? It’s clearly human company he prefers, so another cat to play with won’t help (and might make things worse). My boss is also committed to not returning Mookie to the shelter. At the same time, I don’t think workers’ comp is going to want to pay for feline-related injuries if this keeps up. Help?