TeaPartyReveler, I thought the same thing until my best friend called me one day and said she’d been attacked by her brother’s cat and that she was recovering at her mother’s house. To be honest, I thought she was..well..full of it, and that she was being a bit of a sissy.
So I went over to her mother’s house, and guess what I saw? She had be shredded to ribbons! Her legs were a mess, her face was a mess, and her left breast was so badly mauled that it bears the scars of that attack to this day.
She had been cat sitting for her brother, as she’d done MANY times in the past. The animals had both known her since kittenhood and had never displayed this type of aggression. The attack came in the middle of the night while she was asleep. She managed to fight it off long enough to get to the bathroom and hide. Fortunately, her brother’s apartment had a phone in the bathroom (this was in the days before cell phones), and she called her other brother to rescue her.
Her brother came and when he saw her, called an ambulance. The bedroom looked like a murder had taken place in it, as the bedsheets were heavily stained with blood (they took pictures). Animal control was called and both cats were taken to their vet (only one of the cats had attacked her).
The ER cleaned and dressed the wounds, the cats’ vet declared that both cats were healthy, and my friend went home to Mom for a few days. The cats’ owner chose not to put the attacking cat down (I would have), and she never set foot in his apartment again until the beast was dead.
I tell you...I’d never seen anything like it — had never HEARD of anything like it! — and felt terrible that I thought she’d been BSing me.
I don’t know why these cats freak out like they do...I’ve had cats all my life and none of them have ever done so, but whenever I hear of a story like this, I remember what happened to my friend. I still shake my head in disbelief when I think of it.
Regards,
PS: She also got what I guess was cat scratch fever...she ran a very high temperature for days afterwards, and swelled up like a balloon wherever the cat had scratched her.
Things like that DO happen. A friend of mine was trapped inside the house by a snarling, vicious cat waiting right outside the door to attack her. My friend kept trying to escape, first via the front door, then the back door, but the cat kept moving, going from door to door so that my friend couldn’t get out!
I believe it. Rule #1: never trust someone else’s cat(s). And yes cat scratch fever is real.