We adopted a six year old female cat who is loving and gentle with
humans. But she constantly attacks and terrorizes our neighbor's male
cat who is three. He is gentle and sweet and has been coming to our
house for years.  Sometimes our female cat is friendly with him but
mostly she attacks him.  Why is she doing this?

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 07 Aug 2005 15:26 PDT

Are both cats neutered?

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Clarification of Question by sassywriter-ga on 07 Aug 2005 19:44 PDT

Yes, both cats are neutered.

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Clarification of Question by sassywriter-ga on 08 Aug 2005 20:16 PDT

My cat is healthy and neutered.  She is aggressive towards all cats
but especially to the neighbor's male.  When outside she "sprays" our
trees, car tires and corners of the house.  I've never seen such
behavior in a female cat. I thought only male cats "sprayed." Is this
normal?

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 09 Aug 2005 12:20 PDT

sassywriter,

I have been reluctant to prepare an official Answer to your question,
since I honestly do not think there is a way to explain why a cat
behaves in a certain manner. I am a volunteer with an animal rescue
organization, and I share my home with thirteen cats (plus three dogs
and a husband), so I have quite a bit of experience and a small amount
of understanding of feline behavior. If you like, I would be glad to
gather some material on the subject of aggressive behavior in female
cats, and post excerpts and links that I think would be of interest to
you. What I can't do is give a simple, authoritative answer to the
question "Why does my cat do this?"

I do not want to post an answer and collect a fee if I'm not able to
provide fully adequate service. Would a general, speculative answer
with links to documentation (also general and speculative) be entirely
satisfactory?

~pinkfreud

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Clarification of Question by sassywriter-ga on 09 Aug 2005 13:28 PDT

Any information you can provide, links to documentation etc. would be
extremely helpful and entirely satisfactory. Thank you!!

As I mentioned earlier, I have a houseful of cats; my husband and I
are volunteers with an animal rescue organization. Cat behavior is, I
think, every bit as complicated as human behavior, with the drawback
that cats don't express themselves verbally, so all we have to go on
is body language. (NOTE: The first link below is one that I posted in
the "Comments" section yesterday, but I thought I should repost it so
that everything will be together in one place.)

I have gathered some info for you on aggressiveness in cats. I am only
able to post brief excerpts here; you may want to read some of these
articles in their entirety. To do so, just click the link beneath each
excerpt.

"There is nothing more threatening to a happy house cat, who is
already a bit timid, than to have an entire tom cat come calling right
into home base, and with the approval of her owner. The emotional
effect on poor Penny has caused her to change her usual marking
behaviour indoors of anointing furniture etc with secretions from her
face glands, to using the scent of sprayed urine, and her general
disposition has becomes so nervous that she also periodically loses
her bladder control as well. It is symptomatic of just how upset Penny
must be that she will even spray in front of you, i.e. you are no
comfort to her!
Stop encouraging the tom to come in; keep windows shut so that he
can't sneak in, and let him make up his own mind about what to do and
where to go in the rain, before Penny leaves home! She will need a
very long period of rehabilitation before she will settle again, and
the treatment you have tried will have no effect until you first
remove the source of the problem."

Cat World: Terrified by Tom
http://www.catworld.co.uk/articlecatworld.asp?artid=335&cat=Ask%20the%20experts&pre=

"Aggression between cats can be a common problem when new cats are
introduced in a household - this can be tackled by careful
introductions (see Introducing your cat to other cats and dogs) and
time. Sometimes even cats which have lived alongside each other for
years will have a breakdown in their relationship and begin to fight.
If there is an external factor such as a new cat in the household
which has upset the balance, then this may be remediable. However,
sometimes it can be virtually impossible to get cats back together and
rehoming one may need to be considered.

If you are having persistent problems of aggression of any type with
your cat, especially if targeted towards people or children, you may
wish to talk to your vet about referral to a feline behaviourist."

Feline Advisory Bureau: Nervous cats and aggressive cats 
http://www.fabcats.org/nervous-aggression.html 

"Your question deals with two adolescent male cats (neutered) one of
whom has not been received kindly by his older female sibling
(Gracie), who lives in the same household along with an older male cat
(a 4th cat). The owner, Peggy, has been correctly using a systematic
desensitization procedure to get the younger male cat and Gracie to be
more friendly (or at least less nasty) to one another. The procedure
involves giving the cats short, followed by longer & longer visits
with one another & has resulted in less aggression & more lying around
& not having much to do with one another. How to speed up the process?

Don't get impatient - let the cats go at their own rate. Never force
one cat to get closer to the other cat than at a distance they're
comfortable with. If you hear hissing, you've moved too fast.

Try adding something like a treat (or other tasty morsel, a play item)
that each cat enjoys, so he/she associates getting the treat with the
presence of the other cat. If Gracie begins to see the young male come
into the room, which predicts she'll be given a treat, she'll be more
likely to want to see her younger brother rather than to hiss at him.

Try to provide the opportunity for vertical spacing between the cats
in addition to horizontal spacing. It may be important for Gracie to
be higher than her younger brother (as in, lying on a bookshelf or the
back of your couch) as well as just farther away across the room.
She'll let you know what she's comfortable doing.

Some older cats take months before they'll tolerate another cat in the
household, but these options for desensitizing Gracie to her brother
may hasten the process by weeks."

NOVA Online: Ask The Behaviorist
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vets/responsecat0205.html

"When territory-based aggression occurs within the home, cats hiss,
spit and growl at their housemates. When outright attacks occur the
aggressor or dominant cat will be the one that jumps at another cats
rear lumbar area. When wounds occur they are on the tail and loins of
the more submissive cats and on the face of the aggressor. Cats in
this situation often urine spray mark the house to reassert their
dominance.

The cues that cats give to one another can be very subtle. Cats that
live harmoniously with one another have learned to live with smaller
territories - such as a favorite room - or through sharing space at
different times of day. Generally, only one cat will be on a prized
object such as a sofa at one time. Sharing is very precarious for cats
so anything that disturbs the situation can lead to aggression and
fights. A new apartment, new furniture or even moving a sofa or bed
may lead to turf arguments. Adding a new cat to the household always
causes stress and battles over turf and authority. When we are lucky,
the cats work these arguments out over a period of months.

Territorial disputes among cats can develop gradually in the home. The
most assertive cat in the household gradually begins to guard favorite
objects and space and threaten or attack lesser-ranked cats in the
house. Depending on the temperaments of the lesser cats, they may make
concessions and cease to frequent a given area or only use it when the
dominant cat is away. In these situations any of the cats may begin
hiding, urine spraying, excessive licking and grooming or other stress
related activity."

2ndChance: Dealing With Aggressive Behavior In Your Cat
http://www.2ndchance.info/aggressivecat.htm

"It sometimes helps to use Feliway (tm) spray in the house prior to
bringing the cat home who has been gone for a while and then to use it
for a couple of weeks  afterwards.

It is a pheromone spray that is supposed to induce a friendly or calm
feeling in cats. We have tried using anti-anxiety medications in this
circumstance in a couple of cases, with variable luck. We have been
using buspirone (Buspar Rx) but it sometimes makes cats more
aggressive so it is a little bit of a risk to use this medication.
Some vets like to use amitriptyline (Elavil Rx) or paroxetine (Paxil
Rx) but we have not tried either of these medications so I can't give
you a personal perspective on them."

Vet Info: Aggression Between Cats
http://www.vetinfo.com/catcataggr.html

"Feliway® is used as a treatment to help prevent your cat from
engaging in marking behaviour. It also can be used to help calm your
cat in stressful situations. It is clinically proven to end urine
marking within 30 days with a 95% success rate and more and more vets
in Britain and America are using it to help treat stress related
disease in cats...

Feliway® is a synthetic analogue of natural occurring feline facial
pheromones that make cats feel calm and secure within their
environment. Feliway mimics these pheromones and when sprayed or
diffused within the environment creates a comforting and reassuring
feeling, calming the cat reducing the impulse to undertake urine or
scratch marking."

ParkVets: Feliway
http://www.parkvets.com/microsite/flutdfeliway.html

"Felifriend Information...
A slight different form of Feliway, its presence on any human or other
animal will increase your cat's confidence and reduces its anxiety
especially if that individual is unknown to them."

ParkVets: Felifriend
http://www.parkvets.com/microsite/orderformfelifriend.html

My Google search strategy:

Google Web Search: "female cat" aggressive OR aggression
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22female+cat%22+aggressive+OR+aggression

Google Web Search: cat "neutered OR spayed female" aggressive OR aggression
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=at+%22neutered+OR+spayed+female%22+aggressive+OR+aggression

Google Web Search: cat OR cats "female spraying"

I hope this helps! If anything is unclear or incomplete, please
request clarification; I'll gladly offer further assistance before you
rate my answer.

Very best regards,
pinkfreud

It seems there is no easy answer to my question, but your researcher
provided me with a wealth of knowledge on feline behavior, as well as,
her personal experiences with animals. Thank you!

"Hell hath no wrath like a woman spurned."  Shakespeare

Sometimes cats just become intolerant of their own kind. One of our
cats is a seven-year-old neutered female who is smoochy and purry with
humans, but has gradually become more and more hostile toward other
cats. To keep the peace, we've had to restrict her to a two-room area
of the house with the one cat that she can tolerate. If she leaves
this area and mixed with the other kitties, she hisses and spits and
whacks the other cats with her paws, without provocation.

There are medications that can help reduce aggressive behavior, but
the easiest thing to do is to rearrange the cat's circumstances so
that she doesn't contact cats with whom she has been known to fight.

In the cat world the bosscat is the local un-neutered female with the
most kittens, and gradually down the pecking order to neutered cats,
with (I think) neutered males at the bottom.

She's defending her territory, and telling him "Girls Rule, OK ?"

Chip her and get a classy cat flap that uses a transponder.
(I don't like collars on cats)

Cats are very territorial - especially inside the cat flap.

Ammusingly, a friend of mine did that, and found his cat 'opening' the
flap for a pal - a sort of invitation for 'coffee' - yet she was
neutered.

Anthropomorphisation of cats is very unsound, as I learnt in an unpleasant way.

They ain't human - and they don't behave - or think like humans
(although some humans behave like cats)

It's actually not unusual for female cats to spray urine. I once had
an elderly neutered female who could spray as high as any tomcat. She
would dance and twitch her tail for a few moments first, and then she
turned on the pressure. For reasons not known to me, she wanted to
spray against the upright surface of the bathtub. At least it was easy
to clean!

Here's an article about urine-spraying females that you may find interesting:

http://www.catworld.co.uk/articlecatworld.asp?artid=335&cat=Ask%20the%20experts&pre=

Thank you so much for the article and all your help!!

Dear sassywriter

I notice the Google Editors were not too keen on the theory that your
cat may be gay !! :-)
Mongolia

Dear frde
>They ain't human - and they don't behave - or think like humans
>(although some humans behave like cats)

I once got really badly bitten by  a cat. It belonged to my Landlord/landlady.
I now realise that they are not so different from their larger cousins.
Mongolia

If we were 2 inches tall - humanity would be extinct (or farmed)

I never understand the fuss about tigers becoming extinct
- apart from railways and a few other minor things, the most valued
attribute of Europeans was that they were good at killing tigers.

Freddy,
I didn't think the British really considered themselves to be Europeans ...
Remeber your Colomials too, please, Hemingway and Teddy Roosevelt also
were pretty good shots.
Myoarin

Thank you for the nice tip. I'm sorry you weren't fully satisfied.

~pinkfreud