Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello! Guess I'll just jump right in:

My hubby and I have a 2 year old female kitty. We got her from a Humane Society when she was just a tiny baby and she's absolutely wonderful. We never had any problems with her until recently. Hubby's brother moved in with us 10 months ago and with him came his daughter part time. Daughter will turn three in a month. My kitty (Fela) was very accepting of her at first and she used to love my other neice who did not live with us. Unfortunately, ten months with a toddler has changed her mind about children. The problem I'm having now is my normally sweet and even tempered kitty has started behaving badly with no provication. She will often rush to attack neice (guess to get back at neice rushing to attack her which happens all the time) but lately has also taken to rushing at hubby and me for no reason and clawing our ankles. She also has become way more skittish and almost straight out mean on occassion, hissing and growling at us like she never EVER did before.

My question is this: neice and brother are moving out this week. Can we expect our sweet kitty to come back or can this be irreversable? How do we molify her when we have children of our own? and last, can we expect this sort of behavior when we get another cat which we are hoping to this year?

Thank you

Your cat is very stressed right now. Frankly in the interests of safety you might want to consider asking your vet to prescribe some sort of antianxiety medication which can be tapered off after the toddler leaves. A Comfort Zone plug-in with Feliway might also help.

I cannot stress too much not to get another cat at this time. However, if your cat does get back to her sweet disposition, your own baby probably won't be a problem since it will be so small at first and she'll have some time to get used to the idea that this is a part of the family.
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Smile, it will make them wonder what you are up to!

Thank you .

I figured having neice around was causing her a lot of stress. That is a lot of the reason we asked brother to leave. Part of the agreement with him staying here was if the cat was hurt at any time they were out instantly because she was here first and I know that neice has hit, kicked or pulled my cats tail more than once and brother did nothing about it. I only found out when I saw her do it last week and bro said "you need to quit doing that."

Fela's a sweetie when neice isn't around. It's almost like she's trying to punish us for letting her back in the house because she will only rush at us when neice is here as well.

I'll check into the plug in things.

We weren't going to get the kitten anytime soon. We had to basically beg the landlord to let us have one cat. We want to get another one mostly for Fela. She has seperation anxiety something awful. She hates being alone at all. According to my neighbor, she will sit and yowl at the door for hours if we leave even for a short time. We thought having a playmate might help with that. Not a good idea? Wouldn't be for at least a few more months after we move out of here.

Thank you for your advice. It's greatly appreciated.

If your niece was bugging your kitty then perhaps the kitty will recover much sooner than I had originally thought!

Good luck!
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Smile, it will make them wonder what you are up to!

When you do decide to get a new kitten. Go to introducing new pets forum. There is a lot of good advice on there. And if taken will help reduce problems with introductions.
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Jaime owned by
Mya the dog
and the cats:Crash, Moxie, Gabby and sometimes Tucker