How do I get my cat's attention when they are in attack mode?

Question

I have four cats and one of them is terrified of everything such as a slight noise will make him jump. I have another who is very playful and recently started really picking on the scared one. I notice when my cat is about to attack him and I tried everything to get him to leave him alone.

My mom tries to hit him but I don't like that so I call him I try to get louder and louder to get him away but it doesn't work. It's like he's in a trance or something and he can hear me but he doesn't care.

I can't call him to give him treats because I do have other cats and they will smell it and then it becomes a feeding frenzy and then it feels like I'm rewarding him for about to pick on a cat. So I don't know what to do to get his attention so he can leave my fragile cat alone.

Answer 1

In short: you cannot do it in a nice way.

What I mean is that once your cat is in attack mode, it will probably ignore any lures like treats and toys and calls for cuddles. In nature, wild cats have to hunt prey to survive. If they get distracted while being on a hunt, they will starve. So evolution made sure that the hunt is the only thing in a cats mind once they switched to hunt mode.

That leaves only "not so nice" ways to dissuade your cat. A very common and in my opinion most humane way is to squirt water at your cat. You can buy empty squirt bottles for cheap. If you decide to use an empty product bottle from something like a cleaning or beauty product, make sure it's absolutely clean and there's no residue of the old product left in the bottle or the squirt mechanism. Cats are known to have toxic reactions to many substances that are safe for humans.