14-day guide · one step a day
Fights with the other cat. A swipe at the dog. A bite when you stroke them, an ambush at your ankles, an attack after a cat walked past the window. The Stressed Cat, our 14-day guide, helps you find what sets it off, step by step and from a safe distance, starting with the vet. The same guide covers peeing outside the box, scratching and hiding too.
Go to the vet today if the aggression started suddenly in a cat who used to be gentle, or if it comes with limping, hiding, not eating, crying when touched or picked up, or any other sign that your cat is unwell.
In older cats, stiff joints, a sore mouth, or failing sight or hearing can make a gentle cat snap when touched or startled. Your vet can tell you whether that’s part of it.
Until the vet has seen your cat, only two things change at home: distance and safety, as in the next section. The aggression track’s Reset steps wait until after the visit.
Safety first
Six rules that come before the method, and stay for as long as you need them. The guide puts them on a printable safety card.
Everything else on this page, and in the guide, follows one rule: you stay out of reach. Doors, barriers, distance, treats tossed or offered on a long spoon, and wand toys. Never hands.
Why it happens
Cats don’t attack out of meanness, and they don’t hold grudges. A cat’s first choice is to avoid trouble: leave, hide, climb, or stare until the other backs off. Then come the warnings: ears turning, a lashing tail, a hiss. A swipe or a bite is what’s left when the warnings didn’t work, or there was nowhere to go.
Behind it there’s nearly always something the cat wants to stop or keep away. Pain. Fear of a person, a dog or a noise. A rival in the hallway, or a cat outside they can’t reach. A hand that kept stroking after they’d had enough. Hunting energy with nothing to hunt but your ankles.
Different as these look, they come back to one thing: a cat who doesn’t feel in control of their space, their body or what happens next.
Think of your cat’s day as a glass of water. Every small thing that bothers them adds a little.
A cat from next door sits on the fence every evening. A drop.
The younger cat has started sleeping in the hallway, right where the older one needs to pass. A drop.
There’s one food bowl and one litter box, both in the same small room. A drop.
The dog is new, friendly, and far too interested. A drop.
Your cat copes with each one. Until the glass is full, and the next small thing spills it over: a hand on their back, a door slamming, the other cat walking past. It looks as if it came from nowhere. The glass had been filling for weeks.
That’s why telling a cat off only adds another drop. The way forward is to find the biggest drops and take them out, one at a time, while everyone stays safe.
A cat’s warnings are small and fast. An ear turns sideways, the tip of the tail flicks, the skin along the back ripples, the body goes still for half a second. Most of us never learn to see them, so the bite seems to come without warning. It didn’t. The warning was just very quiet.
A lot of what we’re told makes things harder, too. Kittens are played with by hand because it’s sweet when they’re tiny; two years later, the same game is an ambush at your ankles. A cat on their back looks like they want a belly rub; many don’t. New cats are put together on day one and left to “sort it out”, because that’s what everyone does.
Your cat isn’t bad, or broken. You haven’t failed them. You’ve both been doing your best with what you knew. This page is just more to know.
Most owners have tried a few of these. Each one makes sense, and each one leaves something out.
Telling them off. A shout, a water spray, a tap on the nose. Your cat learns to fear you, not to stop, and often to skip the warning before the next bite.
Letting them sort it out. Cats rarely do. Each fight makes the next one more likely.
Putting them together to make friends. Feeding side by side, holding one cat near the other. It forces a closeness neither chose, and puts your hands in the middle.
Tiring them out with rough play. Wrestling with your hand teaches a cat that hands are prey. The ankles come next.
Picking them up to settle them. A cat who is wound up and held still will often bite the arm that holds them.
A spray or a plug-in, on its own. The guide has a plug-in diffuser among its changes, never instead of them: on its own, it can’t add a second feeding spot or block the view of the cat outside.
What these have in common: they’re guesses, without first finding out what sets it off, and several put you within reach. The guide works the other way round: safety first, then watching, then one change at a time.
These are the kinds the guide helps you tell apart in Days 1–3. You can start watching tonight, from a safe distance.
Hissing, swatting, chases that end with one cat cornered. And the quiet kind, easy to miss: one cat blocking a doorway while the other waits, long still stares, one cat living on top of the wardrobe, spraying where it never happened before.
Ask yourself. Does each cat have their own food, water, box and bed, in different places? Did it start with a new cat, a move, or a trip to the vet?
The cat hisses or swats when the dog comes close, especially in a doorway, a corner or near their food. If the dog has chased them before, they may strike first.
Ask yourself. Can your cat always get somewhere high, out of the dog’s reach? Does the dog chase, even in play?
Your cat asks for attention, enjoys a few strokes, then turns and bites. Just before: a flicking tail, skin rippling on the back, ears turning sideways.
Ask yourself. Who starts it, you or your cat? How many strokes before it happens, and where on the body?
Ambushes from behind the sofa, pounces on moving feet, a grab at your hand under the duvet. Most common in young indoor cats, at dawn and dusk.
Ask yourself. Was your cat played with by hand as a kitten? How much play with a toy do they get each day?
Crouched low, ears flat, pupils wide, hissing. A frightened cat bites when they can’t get away: when someone reaches under the bed, picks them up, or comes at them with the carrier.
Ask yourself. Does it happen only when your cat is cornered or held? Do they hide a lot as well? Then the guide’s fear and hiding track is for you too: see fear and hiding.
Your cat sees a cat outside and can’t reach it. The tension lands on whoever is nearest: the other cat, the dog, or you, sometimes minutes later.
Ask yourself. Does it happen near windows or doors? Does your cat stare out at the same time each day, tail twitching?
New, sudden aggression, especially when your cat is touched in one place, picked up or brushed. A cat who used to be gentle, or an older cat who has slowed down.
Ask yourself. Nothing: book the vet. This is the one kind you can’t work out at home.
It’s normal to recognise more than one, and one often sets off another. The guide helps you put them in order and choose what to change first.
The Stressed Cat
The Stressed Cat, with its aggression track: a PDF and 14 daily emails, one step at a time, starting with your vet. It arrives by email right after payment.
€37One payment, yours to keep
Fourteen days is the length of the guide, not a deadline for your cat. With aggression, slow is safe: bringing two cats back together can take weeks, and that’s part of the plan.
What’s inside
One guide for the four problems where stress often plays a part. You follow the aggression track; the other three are there if you need them. A PDF to keep, with a contents page that takes you straight to your track, and one email a day.
Concept image. Final packaging in development.
Day 0 comes in the delivery email, with the guide and the vet sheet. It asks which problem you’re seeing: choose aggression, and from the next morning one email a day brings that day’s step on the aggression track, for Days 1 to 14.
Day 0 · Rule out
Days 1–3 · Read, for every cat
Days 4–10 · Reset, on the aggression track
Days 11–14 · Review, for every cat
Every day: one email, one step, one thing to do, and a line in your diary. Most days take a few minutes of doing and a few minutes of watching. Days 4 and 5 take longer, because they move things around the home.
On the evening of Day 3: a plug-in diffuser goes in, in the room your cat uses most, and stays on. It’s one of the changes, so it gets a day of its own, before the first step of your track. Any diffuser of this kind will do.
What you’ll need: a wand toy, treats your cat loves, a long spoon, a cushion kept where fights happen, a door or a baby gate you can close, and a plug-in diffuser for the room your cat uses most.
With an enzymatic cleaner made for urine: if tension between cats has come with spraying, on every spot, so the smell stops calling them back.
What it won’t do: sort things out with no changes at home. We don’t sell anything that does, because we don’t think it exists. It works in flats and houses, with one cat or several, and with a dog in the home.
The Stressed Cat
Launch prices, VAT included. Sales open soon. Your guide arrives by email right after payment: the PDF and Day 0, the vet check. Then one email a day for 14 days.
The guide, with the aggression track
€37
One guide for the four problems where stress often plays a part: a PDF and 14 daily emails, one step a day, starting with your vet. One payment, yours to keep.
The guide and the home set
€56.90
€76.80 if bought separately · €56.90 together · you save €19.90 (25%)
The guide, plus Little Wins and Felina Home, the plug-in diffuser, in one order. The guide arrives by email right after payment; the rest comes by post.
Inside, at single prices
Before you pay
Money back on the guide for 30 days. Try the guide for 30 days from the day it arrives. If it isn’t right for you and your cat, write to us and we refund you in full, even if you’ve started it.
Your right of withdrawal on the guide. EU law gives you 14 days to withdraw from a purchase. For a guide, that right ends once it’s delivered: at checkout you ask for it to be delivered straight away, and you accept that the right of withdrawal ends when it is. Until then, you can still withdraw.
Little Wins, Felina Home and the method kit. For Little Wins, Felina Home and its refills, and each delivery of the method kit, you have 14 days from the day they arrive to withdraw, as EU law gives you, and we refund what you paid for them, with the standard delivery cost. The terms of sale, published when sales open, will have the details.
To ask for your money back, send one email to hello@felinacatcare.com from the address you used to pay. No form.
Questions
Something else, before or during the guide? See all questions or write to us at hello@felinacatcare.com: our team answers by email.
No, start with your vet. Sudden aggression often has a medical cause, and pain is a common one. Until the visit, keep everyone safe and change nothing else. Once your vet has seen your cat, the guide takes it from there.
Many cats enjoy a few strokes, then reach their limit quickly, with warnings we barely see. Day 2 shows you the signs; Day 7 the petting rules: let your cat come to you, short strokes on the head and cheeks, and stop before the tail starts to flick.
Usually it’s hunting energy with nowhere else to go. Don’t run or shout: stand still, and toss a toy away from you. Day 6 builds daily play with a wand toy, so the hunting goes somewhere safe.
The cat coming home can smell so different that the other doesn’t recognise them. Keep them apart until the returning cat has groomed and settled. If it doesn’t pass, the guide’s smell-first step and slow reintroduction help.
Sometimes that’s the kindest choice, but it’s a big one. First ask your vet or a veterinary behaviourist whether changing how your cats share the home is worth trying.
We can’t promise that, and we’d be wary of anyone who does. Every cat and every home is different. What the guide gives you is a clear, safe way to find what sets your cat off, and what to change.
Yes. The Stressed Cat has a track for each of the four problems where stress often plays a part: peeing outside the box, scratching and hiding, as well as aggression. You follow one track at a time, and if you see more than one problem, the guide tells you where to start.
The guide is the method, and the changes you make at home are where things happen. The method kit brings what the method uses again and again: Little Wins for the reward steps, a new toy for play, refills for the diffuser and the next printable step. So it’s all at hand, and it’s easier to keep going. Little Wins are treats and Felina Home is a plug-in diffuser: neither is a medicine, and neither replaces your vet.
No. It’s a plug-in diffuser for the home: it releases a synthetic copy of the pheromone cats leave when they rub their cheeks on furniture and people. It isn’t a medicine, and it doesn’t replace your vet. In the guide, it goes in on a day of its own, in the room your cat uses most. See Felina Home.
No. One guide covers every animal in the home: the steps are written for one-cat and multi-cat homes.
The same guide
The Stressed Cat has a track for each of these, so one guide covers them all.
Fear is behind a lot of aggression. If your cat also hides for hours, start here too.
Tension between cats often shows up at the litter box, or as spraying.
Scratching by doors and windows is often about territory too.
The first five pages of the guide, for all four problems: the full glass, the vet checklist and what to try today. Free, no email needed.
