What's up with this odd Cat behavior?

My wife and I have two siamese attack kittens [they are actually not kittens anymore they are both 3, but we like the nickname] One male and one female. The female is significantly larger than the male and they usually get on quite well with eachother. They are indoor cats, so no outside at all for them. This morning we had the large bay window in the front of the house open so they could part take of their favorite past time, lounging on the sill doing absolutely nothing. Today the female cat was chattering like a chipmonk and darting back and forth from the couch to the window and so on and so forth. Her tail puffed like crazy! I take a look outside and there is this big ol’tom cat sitting outside just staring at her… Our male is watching but not doing too much of anything.

The outside cat moves on and our female continues doing what she was for alittle longer. Then our male cat meanders down onto the living room floor and goes for the kitchen… The female targets in on him like she is stalking, he immediately nmoticed this and goes on the defensive; good thing because she bounded after him and attcked, a little more viscously then usual. He cowered like alittle bitch and got on his back… she didn’t back down and lunged at him again and he got back up and just started swinging…then a tuft of hair came flying then another!

This is highly unusual behaviour… not necessarily the fighting but the tufts of fur and the females ferociousness. He went to the middle of the kitchen floor and she watched him… almost hypnotically, then she bolted for the window again, and looked outside…Then when the male moved to walk to his food dish, she whipped her head around and pounced off the sill onto the living room floor and right back at him, stopping before loping his head completely off, and just stared him down. She then paced alittle in front of him tail puffed, and walked back to the sill. For ten full minuted the male sat perfectly still, and every minute or so the female would come back and circle him, and pace then back to th sill.

Whats up with this behaviour?

They are both fixed…

It’s called redirected aggression and seems oddly common in cats. Recently such an incident caused my supervisor’s elderly mother’s cat to freak out and take a chunk out of her leg. She ended up in the hospital with a nasty infection, the cat ended up put down.

Usually it seems to be a short-lived thing, but sometimes it can cause a more lingering problem. A couple of short articles, hastily googled:

http://www.kingstownecatclinic.com/Redirected%20Aggression.htm

http://www.sniksnak.com/cathealth/aggression3.html

  • Tamerlane

It’s displaced aggression. Pretty common for cats. Your female really wanted to attack that interloping stranger outside. The chattering is a sign of frustration; they do it to birds and squirrels too. But since she couldn’t get to him, she attacked the male.

Great link it’s exactly what happened - now our male is giving the female a very WIIIDE berth when he walks around her… She’s looking at him like nothing happened… I think this may cause a complex in our male…