zzzzzzzzzrrrrrrrrrrrrppptclick...........rewind
My Sassy
The kat thingy. I used to have a cat, that i gave to Michelle when I moved back to Ore.
She still has her. The cat is now 13rs old. And when she was young. She was insane...she would
be sweet and loving and calm, and all of a sudden she would start to hunker down, her eyes would
glaze over (i swear) and she would absolutely start to flip out. She would run up and down the hall
way climbing the walls at times, come running thru the house up on the back of the couch on her
toes like a halloween kitty. Then jump in the air, and hiss at you...she would carry on like this for
about ten mins...and if you didnt know she was in one of these moods...you would get scratched
up pretty good. I used to have claw marks all on my legs until she outgrew this...
She just might be the smartest cat i have ever seen though....she is using up all of her
nine lives. I wonder at the fact she is still alive. She is a mellow and sweet kitty all the time now.
Maybe Kelly could tell us if there is a known cat syndrome like that.
Hey Janice, what you describe sounds like "normal," albeit bizarre to us humans, cat behavior. My beloved orange tabby, Gabriel, would display such behavior at times (usually after a bowel movement)... one of my current kitties does such things on occasion - mostly in the evening. Cats are the most recently domesticated of all of our domesticated animals. They agree to live in our homes with us, but they still have lots of primal, feral, predatory instincts. That being said, most "house cats" don't get to exercise or hunt on a daily basis as they would in the wild. These displays of bizarre behavior are merely an outlet for what I guess you could call "cabin fever."
However, truly bizarre behavior can be sign of a more serious medical problem (e.g. brain tumor), where the bizarre behavior can be a manifestation of a seizure, or even possibly obsessive/compulsive disorder. The episodes you describe in your cat all sound predatory to me - though your cat sounds like she was pretending to be the one hunted rather than the huntress. How to distinguish a "normal" bizarre behavior from a "bizarre" bizarre behavior? Ask a vet if you're not sure!
There is also a syndrome in cats called "hyperesthesia" - this basically means extra-sensitive, and is an overreactive response to normal stimulation. For example, you rub your cat under the chin as you normally would, and unexpectedly your cat tries to bite you and then runs away and hides. This is usually a manifestation of a medical problem - the cat is hurting or otherwise unwell, and expresses it by overreacting to touch. The medical problems that can cause hyperesthesia are varied, and I'm sure everyone has had enough of a veterinary lesson by now!
