Cat Clients

Tal K., Bilbo and Gandolph

A case of redirected aggression with a happy ending!

My cats had been together for 8 years — best of friends. One day, the neighbor's cat peeked into my apartment through the back door, and the cats began fighting horribly, with one of them confining the other to hiding under the bed. The fighting was so bad and aggressive they simply had to be separated!!! I was DEVASTATED. I was even more distraught when I read online that it was a case of "redirected aggression" — one cat redirected his aggression from the intruder cat (who escaped in time) to the other cat. Several websites also said that it is a VERY hard situation to resolve, and sometimes requires that one cat be placed in a different home. After more than a week, there seemed to be nothing I could do to make things better. I began to lose hope.

Alana came over at 3 pm on a Saturday. By 5 pm (the end of the session), my cats were able to tolerate being in the same room!! I continued with the retraining program exactly as Alana suggested that evening and the next morning in intervals, and to my great surprise and utter joy, after about 7 hours of training in total (i.e., by the early afternoon the next day) all aggression and hissing had stopped, and by the late afternoon — so only about 24 hours after Alana left — THEY WERE ONCE AGAIN GROOMING ONE ANOTHER!!! I got my happy cats back!!!!

I am writing this as both of them are lying peacefully next to me. I have met many, many cat people in my life, I worked with an SPCA center, I introduced new cats to households, and I really didn't think anyone could teach me anything new about how to handle cats. But Alana just blew me away. THANK YOU SO MUCH ALANA, not just from me, but also on behalf of Bilbo and Gandolph!

— Tal