Hi,

We have a beautiful Bengal Cat - Nova, who is 1 and 1/2 years old. We have had her since she was 12 weeks old. She is your usual mischievous, attention seeking, vocal Bengal who loves being in whatever room we are in. She has a big appetite and is up at 6am on the dot demanding her wet food and as soon as we get in from work (she has dried food constantly throughout the day).

We are concerned about unusual bouts of aggression though, which seem to come out of the blue. She will fixate on either our arms, legs or feet (mostly arms) and has a crazy stare in her eyes. She then pounces and wraps around the limb - biting, scratching and kicking. We can sometimes see she is about to do this and try to assert authority with our voices, saying no, but she is still so fixated and ready to pounce she keeps trying to pounce until we move away. Or pick her up and move her out while she attacks.

We would like to try and understand why she does it and the best way to stop her as our arms are full of scratches. This is frustrating as it comes in phases from her and usually she isn't so aggressive. She can be lovely...

I hope you can help?

Kelly and Andrew

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Sounds to me like she has some excess energy to be burnt off, and is possibly bored. How often do you play with her? Is she home alone all day? If you don't already have a flying frenzy/da bird, get one and play with her until she's literally panting. Get her jumping after it, up on to the cat tree (assuming you have one, if you don't it's a really good investment for bengals!) and down again etc. I've used a laser pointer as well to get them charging up and down the hall to wear them out. At the age Nova is, I regularly had to give them a really hard play session before bed.

Jagger used to get that crazy look in the eyes too, so as you can recognise it, you to need to redirect her as soon as possible. Have a large cuddly toy or a kicker toy to hand or any toy she enjoys to remove her focus from your arms and legs. I always have toys to hand just in case!

Hopefully you've never used your hands/feet to play with her? Never a good idea with a Bengal as they grow into big, powerful cats and can do some serious damage!

Good luck!

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Clare
Hendrix and Jagger, Brown Marble Boys (born 18 August 2013)
Hampshire, UK

Please describe how you guys play with her, and how often do you play with her. Is she the only cat in the house? Are there any children in the house?

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The little monsters 3

A Kickaroo would also help, instead of arm and legs. It sounds like wanting attention too.

I agree with the others that this is excess energy. She appears to be home alone during the day. She is telling you she wants to play and have human interaction (which is very important to a bengal). She needs a tall cat tree and tons of wand toys to have you whip around her. Kickaroo toys are great as well. I'm sure you come home from work tired and just want to rest, but she has rested all day and now wants to play and interact with her humans -- and she's doing it the only way she knows how. You need to have toys beside you at all times and redirect her attention to the toys. She's not particularly interested in your arms and legs, she just wants to play. Give this a try and see if things improve.

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The little monsters 3

I'm guessing this behavior has not been going on for over a year. Cat owners get disgusted much earlier than this and won't tolerate attacks for very long. One would ask for advice much, much earlier, you would think.

Hi,

Thank you so much for all of your replies! We do work and unfortunately she is alone during the day. We live next to a main road and don't have a garden, so she isn't able to go out. Our future plans are to buy a house, away from a main road and then she can go out and play in the garden. I think you are probably right about the boredom. We never use our hands to play with her as the breeder we got her from told us how important it was not to do that. We have sooooo many toys and scratching posts for her, she has completely taken over our house with her bits! We use stick toys a lot with her and we do have a laser pen too. Her favourite game to play is fetch, with a little mouse she has! She loves us throwing it and she brings it back to us. She doesn't scratch the furniture and is very well behaved in that respect. I really like the idea of having toys near us so we can quickly distract her, will defo be doing that! We played with her for ages today and got her another new toy with catnip in, which she loves. Hopefully if we keep that up the aggressive bouts will be less! Thanks to everyone who posted, we really appreciate it!

Kelly, Andrew and Nova! :)