Just got tore up bad by my mothers cat

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The puppy was chasing her trying to play. She freaked completely out, exploded constantly and tried but failed to get onto furniture because she was damn hysterical. She kept falling off. I reached down to help her up to "safety" and she went Wild Kingdom on me. She doesn't have claws, just teeth. Bad bite on the back of my hand plus several smaller ones around it. I washed it and put peroxide on it. Bandaged it. She's had shot of every kind, checkups, dental cleanings and even the f*****g beauty parlor. My mother took better care of that f*****g cat than she did of me when I was little. So I know I haven't caught anything from her. No reason to go to the hospital, stitches there would pull out and I've done what they would do. They wouldn't dare give me anything for pain down here because everybody who comes to this ER is considered to be drug seeking, so that's out.

I hate that cat and if it wasn't my dead mother's cat I would have it put down.

Holy smokes <I've just learnt this expression & I'm using it> Seriously, OliveOilMom, look out! You and this cat evidently have 'bad blood' and it's best you leave it alone. Or else. You don't need a vet, but instead an exorcist. Don't know what to advise, but maybe you and kitty ought to just part ways, yes?

In all seriousness, could you contact a cat shelter so kitty could be appropriately donated? Could the cat shelter place her so she live out in the country? Wild Kingdom indeed. From what you've described, kitty might have a serious behavioural disorder - she could hurt a child (or you!) badly and may not be fit to live in any household.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxiz--MY8o4[/youtube]

It might help kitty to have a box to run into and hide, where the puppy can't get in (I don't know how big the puppy is so I don't know if this is realistic).

If serious aggression is a regular thing with this cat, you could ask a vet about medicating her. The same medications given to humans for depression and anxiety are sometimes given to cats for psychological and behavioral problems to mellow them out.

If she has only become aggressive recently it might be a good idea to get her checked out at the vet anyways, since painful or uncomfortable health problems can make some cats really ornery and aggressive.

I am not sure it would be a good idea to send a de-clawed cat to live out in the country (assuming you mean as a barn kitty?)....but if it came to that, a no-kill shelter or cat rescue would probably take in an extremely aggressive cat and find it an appropriate place to live rather than just deeming it "unadoptable" and euthanizing it.

In situations like this you take care of the puppy (as long as it isn't an big, agressive dog) not the cat. A scared cat can't control its behavior and is going to attack everyone who touches it. My favorite cat (usually calm, very patient one - I could do anything to it and it was only meowing when it didn't like something, never scratching/biting) scratched me badly once because my mom started a vacuum cleaner near us when I was holding the cat. It was totally reasonable, I was scared too so I could understand the cats reaction. It was all my moms fault.

Never touch a scared cat. It is just something you can't do, you will only make the situation worse. If you have to touch it use a towel and don't let the cats tooth/claws reach you. The best way in situations like this is to remove the danger (get puppy out of the room, turn off the vacuum cleaner) and speak to the cat in a calming voice till it calms down or open a door and make enough space so the cat can run there without being afraid of being catched by you.

Last edited by Kiriae on 30 Jun 2014, 3:25 pm, edited 3 times in total.

if you haven't had a tetanus shot in the past ten years, you should get one. dog and cat bites shouldn't get stitches ever, as they run a high risk of infection. antibiotics may be indicated.

Very true. Even the gentlest cat will bite and/or scratch when it is scared.

I am VERY sorry this happened.

Oh sure, no one blames or tries to control the puppy because it was terrorizing the cat. Saying it doesn't know any better because it's a puppy is about as stupid an excuse as for letting a human toddler destroy someone's house. When a cat is terrified, it will not cling to it's owner for protection, it will try to escape to wherever it can hide and it can seriously mess up anyone who tries to stop it because it is too frightened. That's just how it is. But no, everyone thinks their dogs are sweet, lovely little babies who would never hurt anyone, even after the dog (usually a pit bull) rips up another pet or even a person to pieces. That makes me furious, people like that need to be put to sleep and not just the dog! I'm so sick of this whole "cats are evil" nonsense. I have a cat who would probably just damage your hearing because of his over-sized purring while you cuddle him.

I don't think cats are evil. I didn't mention the puppy because the post was focused on the cat attack, and then I got caught up in answering to the idea of the cat being aggressive. But you're right, the puppy needs to learn not to bother the cat, and as Kiriae said, all cats will bite and scratch when they are afraid -- that one incident, horrible and painful as it was for OliveOilMom, doesn't mean the cat is aggressive (and I don't think being aggressive makes a cat evil either).

I've been ripped up pretty bad by my own ordinarily-super-gentle cats when they were frightened by something (during apartment building fire alarms, getting a cat out from under a piece of furniture and trying to hang onto them long enough to get them to the carrier and out the door, you can get some spectacular wounds) and I never thought badly of them for it.

Since we've not heard back from OliveOilMom, I guess we can only conclude that the cat has won.

This is a puppy about 4 or 5 months old. He plays with the other cat. He plays with the dogs. He was chasing her with a stuffed toy in his mouth and dropping it and barking and picking it back up again. He wanted to play. I live with these animals and know them very well.

The cat is about 4 or 5 years old and belonged to my dead mother. She's declawed and has always been mean and antisocial. Never liked anybody but my mother. She has plenty of places to go where the dogs can't get her and usually ignores them. She caught the eye of the puppy and as usual he thought it was play time. Not all cats are evil, but this one is a mean cat. I have her because she's the last thing I have of my mother, and she's adjusted well to living here with us, another cat and two grown dogs and a puppy. All her life it was her and my mother and no other animals or people.

Now, if you want our puppy put to sleep because he was barking and trying to get the cat to play, or me put to sleep because I know that this is a puppy trying to play with a cat who isn't a playful sort and not a pit bull tearing a kitten to shreds or anything, then you are more than welcome to come try. If any of the dogs ever tried to hurt one of the cats or the puppy (who is smaller) they would be punished and know in no uncertain terms that you don't pick on something smaller than you.

You need to stop reading s**t into things that aren't there. I explained exactly what happened, and just because you want to think it was different doesn't make it so.

Good Lord.

My internet went out yesterday evening and we just now got it fixed. It's much better today. I've been bitten before by both dogs and cats when I worked at the vets office as a vet tech. I'm treating it just like we did back them. The deep wound has scabbed over and while it still hurts, it's not as bad. I don't feel my pulse in it anymore. It's swollen and slightly red, but not hot to the touch, and it hurts to grip, but I think that's just typical soft tissue damage that will resolve itself in a few days or a week or so. I can type just fine, I just can't turn a doorknob or something like that.

That cat has always been like that. One of us could be over at my mothers and she might get in your lap or by you and let you pet her and everything is fine and then all of a sudden she bites. Never this hard, but she has broke the skin on a few people. She's declawed and she slaps too, but she's figured out that the teeth are the weapon. Sometimes she's sweet as pie but then out of the blue, when nobody does anything different, and sometimes even when you aren't petting her, she bites.

I went to pick her up because she was all in a lizzy and exploding and trying to get on the table but too upset to do it and kept falling and was in a corner having a stuffed bunny pushed at her by the puppy and she obviously HATED IT, so I tried to pick her up to put her on the table so she would be higher up than the puppy and then be happy because she seems to enjoy sitting up high and staring at him when he barks at her and hops around. I've done that before when he's chased her wanting to play and she wanted no part of it. I guess she must have been in the middle of some kind of cat psychokiller mode or something then. Who knows.

I'm not getting rid of my mother's cat. She's only got a few more years probably, and we are used to her. The puppy will outgrow trying to play with all the other animals before long and ignore her just like the wolf hybrids do. None of them seem to know she doesn't have claws because when she slaps at them they run. There has never been an incident between any of the dogs and cats here, except once when one of the big dogs came to the water bowl while the other cat (the one that used to pee everywhere) was drinking and she slapped him on the nose hard enough to make him bleed. I saw it and my daughter and husband saw it. He was just going to get water, no growling, no posturing, nothing. She got in trouble that time.

Of course my mothers cat may have longer than I think now that we have her. She always had checkups, shots, saw the vet if my mother suspected anything at all, had her teeth cleaned and even was groomed a few times a year, so she was taken care of medically, but my mother overfed her. She was HUGE. She fed her three cans of cat food a day, plus a bunch of those cat treats, plus she had a full bowl of dry food out at all times. The vet kept telling her to put her on a diet but my mother wouldn't. We feed her once a day now like the other cat, and she's down to a good weight and her fur looks nice and sleek again. Maybe that's why she's mad. She's been put on a diet against her will.

Part of it could be that she's dewclawed....that actually damages their feet and causes them pain which can make them irritable I'd be grumpy if someone surgically removed my nails to. Aside from that not all cats like to play with other animals even if its just a harmless puppy and will act like that when another animal tries to 'play' with it.

She's never been around other animals really, and obviously doesn't care for them. She was declawed about 5 years or so ago. My mother lived across the main road from us (not across the street, across the main road at the end of my street) in these old people apartments and they let you have either a small dog or a cat. If they cat is destructive and scratches up the carpet and things, you have to declaw them or get rid of them. My mother bought all kinds of scratching toys, tried to teach her to use them, squirted her with the water bottle, everything, but she kept tearing up the carpet. She had had the cat for a couple years by then and was attached so she got her declawed. She was like this before the surgery though.

I think a lot of it with this cat is isolation. Inside all the time with my mother who gave her constant attention and way too much food. So much food that she was at risk for lots of health problems. She didn't really care for anybody who came over there, me, my husband, and my kids included. Maybe she saw us as a threat to her attention from my mother or something, I don't know.

Also, you have to remember that my mother is her only owner, and she spent 24/7 right up under her for years. Then my mother is suddenly gone and didn't come back. That probably threw her for the biggest loop, moreso than being around our big dogs who ignore her, the younger cat who ignores her, and the puppy who wants to be her best friend in the whole wide world. She's never been in another house or environment besides my mothers place except when she's had to spend the night at the vet for the spay and also the declaw. That's it. Never been on a visit, or even a walk outside even on one of those cat leashes. All this is totally new to her. One reason I'm keeping her, other than the fact that she's all I have left from my mother, is that she at least knows us very well even though she doesn't know our house. She knows the scent of our dogs when we came over there and she could smell them on us. This is the only familiar option she had, and as mean as she is to everybody but my mother, she would probably have been worse to strangers and they would have put her down, or just put her outside where she would end up eaten by a dog or something. At least here there is something familiar, even if it's not home. My mother has only been dead almost two months, so she's probably still wondering whats going on.

It sounds like you did the right thing to look after the cat, its hard to know what to suggest as I've never had a cat like that.
She could be missing your Mother, as she was the only contact the cat had.
She might get used to you after awhile.

Mom's cat never liked anyone but Mom??

Mom's cat isn't adjusting??

Mom's cat is aggressive and mean??

Send Mom's cat to be with Mom. Rainbow Bridge, and all that. Love you, Mom. Kitty misses you, and so do I. Kitty's coming over, I'll be along when I'm ready.

Bye-bye, furball. Basically, if I didn't have kids who would not understand the practicality of it, I would euthanize both cats and the dog in a heartbeat. I didn't used to mind them, but one pisses and s**ts in the corner by the water dish (no medical issues-- had it checked), one won't stay in the house (and we live in the 'burbs, with the kind of neighbors who would poison the cat simply because they don't like us), and the dog pees on the floor every night, sleeps on the couch when we aren't looking, and generally irritates my husband (he never liked dogs and always said I couldn't have one, but when he browbeat me into buying the house he wanted, I decided that if he could force me to accept the house he wanted, I could force him to accept the dog I wanted).

I feel I should accept responsibility for their deaths. Not wait for someone else to kill them.

Of course, if anyone wants a 15-year-old brown tabby cat with terrible toilet habits, an 8-year-old extremely affectionate gray cat who won't stay inside, and a doxie-beagle-????? mix who really needs to live out in the country some where, drop me a PM. All are neutered, have all their shots, and are tolerable to good with children and (most) other animals. The brown cat tends to avoid contact with younger cats, the gray cat seems to feel a need to JOIN cat fights, but will not START them, and the dog attempts to pick fights with much larger dogs until he knows them well (once they are familiar, he is as docile with them as he is with cats, kids, and other small dogs, which is very docile).