My cat only wants to hunt

by Kevin S
(Indpls, IN, USA)

We got a new cat at the humane society a couple of months ago, so we don't really know his background. He really doesn't act like he wants to go outside, but we don't know if he spent time there or not.

The issue is, all he wants to do is hunt. We have another cat, and he follows her around. He gets into the crouch position and just watches her. When she gets close enough to him, he jumps her. He doesn't viciously attack or anything, he just pounces. Sometimes he swats at her.

She hisses and growls at him when this happens, but she doesn't always do that when he is near. She is super sweet and a typical cat.

The other thing he does is attack hands. You really can't pet him without him going after your hand. He will lay on the sofa next to my wife, and next thing she knows he grabs her arm and bites at it while scraping with his back legs. She constantly has scratch marks on her right arm.

If you walk by, he frequently will try to grab your leg too. Like I said, he isn't vicious, so he isn't mean, but he's always hunting.

We have tried giving him a toy when he does that, but he doesn't want it. We have tried squirting him with water when he does it, and it scares him away for about 2 minutes. He comes back pretty quickly though.

He is very bold and brave. When we take him to the vet, he isn't scared at all. We tried a flopping fish toy. He played with it for 5 minutes, and now he ignores it. He is disinterested in a laser pointer.

We have a moving toy that has a tail with a feather on it. He played for that for about 30 minutes, and now he ignores that when we turn it on. He has a couple of little mouse toys that he plays with sometimes, but when he realizes it's not alive, he gets disinterested.

He rarely has his tail up. He does sometimes and will let you pet him, but it is down in the aggressive position 90% of the time. We figured that would change after a while, but after 2 months, it hasn't.

He does sleep on the bed with us, but sometimes he will attack your hand if it's not under the covers. He lays on the couch close to my wife frequently, so he does seem to like us. Sometimes he even lays on the floor exposing his belly, so he seems content at times.

Anyway, what else can we try? We are afraid if we go on vacation and have somebody come over to take care of the cats, that he will jump on their arm and hurt them when they try to pet him.