VETERANARIANS: My cats were best friends, suddenly worst enemies?

Factual Questions
1

I understand there’s such a thing as sudden feline aggression, where two cats who previously got along great all of a sudden start acting aggressively towards each other.

Now, all of a sudden, where there was harmony, now there’s discord. The younger female (3) is suddenly very aggressive towards the older male (5), and it’s causing a lot of problems. They’ve always played with each other and haven’t ever been really mean to one another. Now, they’re trying to avoid each other in the house, and there’s a lot of hissing and spitting involved.

Diet and stool seem healthy on both cats, so I’m doubting illness at this point. Is it worth taking one to the vet to get the checkup? If so, which one? I’m not really relishing the idea of paying for either of them (or BOTH) to have a vet look at them and tell me it’s a temporary thing.

This started about 3 days ago, and it’s driving me batsh*t. I’d appreciate any help from vets, vet techs, or longtime cat owners who’ve gone through similar times.

What did you do to fix the problem?

2

IANAV but I am a LTCO (long time cat owner ~ my whole life actually).

I’ve had two similar incidents, with the same cat.

She was a tiny thing, surely the runt of the litter. Very timid, but very loving to her owner, my grandmother. Though I visited the house almost every day, she was very scared of anybody but Grandma. One day, Grandma said frantically: “Henri was having sex with his SISTER today!!!” :eek: (Henri was not her brother, but to my Grandma they were siblings) I told her she was nuts, because Henri had been fixed. But apparently, she wasn’t nuts. A little while later, Cyndi was indeed pregnant. (Both were indoor cats) If she wasn’t so small to start off with, I wouldn’t have known she was pregnant so early. I had brought Henri back to the vet, to be fixed again. Upon his return, THAT is when she went mental on him. I ended up having to keep Henri at my place because she would have killed him. We joked that she was pissed off that he knocked her up. You didn’t mention, but are your cats fixed? You could have some babies on the way! :smiley:
When my grandma died, I adopted Cyndi. I also had 3 cats of my own, plus Henri. What can you do when grandma asks on her deathbed for me to “take care of her babies”? Though she was used to my cats, (we lived in the same building and visited often) Cyndi was still very timid and usually hid up in a kitchen cupboard over the fridge. I couldn’t even touch her. Suddenly, almost from one day to the next, Cyndi got very attached to me. She got on my lap and purred and looked up lovingly at me, drooling with affection. This worked out for quite some time until my live-in boyfriend (at the time) and I got into a MAJOR fight.

It wasn’t a physical fight, but it might as well have been. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, so loud that my voice would give out every few seconds. And that’s when Cyndi went apeshit. That’s the very second that she lost her mind. Looking back, I think she thought that my life was in danger. She decided that we’d tag team. I kill my boyfriend; she kills the other cats. And that’s what she attempted to do.

She rounded them up. That small 8 lb. cat had my 20 lb. male against the wall. Soon, all the other cats were rounded up and cowering. And she really was going to kill them. My boyfriend and I stopped the argument to save the other cats’ lives. I did something I saw on “The Crocodile Hunter”. I grabbed a blanket and put it over her. I got her out of my bedroom and closed the door, leaving the cats in my room. I figured she needed some cooling off time. Everything calmed down. After 20 minutes, I opened the bedroom door. She went in there again, with the mission to kill them. I got her out again. My boyfriend went across the street, to my brother’s, to cool down himself.

This time, I decided to wait a few hours, before opening the door. When I did, she did the same thing, but with more will in her to kill than anything I’d ever seen. I did my best to get her out again, but this time she turned on me. She was pissed off that I was stopping her from killing them. I couldn’t think of the pain of the scratches and bites; if I didn’t get her out of that room, she would have killed them. Once she was out of the room, she became her old self again.

I went across the street to get my boyfriend. I was in shock. My brother answered the door and I said, “Tell him he has to come home.” My brother looked at me, bleeding everywhere, dripping with blood. He told me to come in. When I explained what happened, we all decided that we had to put Cyndi to sleep. We could only have an apointment in 2 days. So for 2 days, my 4 cats were locked in the spare room. And Cyndi was her ever-loving self. Before I brought her, I decided one last time to see if she would be ok. She did the same thing all over again. So we took her in. One of the hardest days of my life.

I still don’t understand what happened. Maybe you can draw some similarities, somewhere. I hope you aren’t arguing with your SO (if you have one); but if you are, maybe this will give you a clue. My vet said that the cat literally went nuts and I was doing the right thing, because I had other pets in the house. I still feel bad about it (especially because I promised Grandma I’d take care of Cyndi), but I don’t know what else I could have done. :frowning:

3

Both cats are fixed. No hormones getting in the way here.

My SO and I had an argument on Sunday, but the behavior was taking place on Saturday, so I don’t think that’s it. Also, it was nothing truly monumental – nothing above raised voices.

I’m pretty flummoxed. Apart, the cats are totally normal. God only knows what’s going on while we’re both at work.

4

Try out this link,

http://www.catsinternational.org/articles/aggression_to_cats/sharing_a_house.html

It may be re-directed aggression which is also explained,

http://www.catsinternational.org/articles/aggression_to_cats/redir_to_other_cats.html

The scenario is just one way that a misunderstanding between cats can arise, the mere presence of a third can which is visible unavailable to be ‘seen off’ because it is at the other side of a window can be enough to provoke and attack on the second housecat.

5

Oddly enough, we do have a “neighborhood cat” that likes to torment our cats from outside. Our male cat will literally go apesh*t when he sees this cat, yowling and screaming and threatening to burst through the window.

I wonder if perhaps my male went berzerk while we were at work, and the female happened to be around and got scared. Scared enough to want to attack the male from now on over an “imagined slight.” I guess there’s no real way to know.

I’d still take some advice on reacclimating my kids to each other. Has anybody else had this happen to them?