I've been in a similar situation, with a cat I had taken in when she was one day old. By age 3 my friends were calling her Psycho-Cat, and told me she would never change. Meanwhile, I spent my days and nights in a minefield of depression, guilt, rage, pity for my cat, pity for myself, helplessness--til all these emotions collapsed into what felt like a complete nervous breakdown. I was so jumpy, so snarly, so angry and impatient that I resembled my own cat. My Kitty, My Self.

You can turn things around, but only if you take it one step at a time. Right now, you sound like a drowning man. So get your head above water right away by contacting a cat behaviorist. Don't delay. You'll find one, fast. Ask your vet for a recommendation, or ask friends. Call the nearest veterinary school. Not only will this calm your cat, it will calm you. It makes a difference just to tell your situation to an understanding professional, someone who knows what you're going through ... and more to the point, who knows what your cat is going through. You may be at your wit's end, but the behaviorist will be just getting started.

My cat, like yours, had not been properly socialized with other felines when she was young, and those scars can't be completely erased. But I learned how to communicate with her clearly, and to set up an environment she found reassuring. (Ignoring the cat litter was, as it often is with cats, a sign of rage.) And if anyone had to let himself into my apartment when I wasn't there, I locked my cat in a room for the day with her food, water and kitty litter. It's a simple solution, and it's not a cruel one.

She was never a cosy cat dozing in my lap before the fire. But we lived successfully side by side, and I loved her for her twisted but -- eventually -- brave and bearable self.

Maybe neutering the cat, using catnip, or letting the cat outside will be part of solving this situation. But don't put the cart before the horse. Let the behaviourist advise you. If you had the compassion and resolve to nurture an abandoned kitten, you can do this too. Believe me, your cat wants help as much as you do.

people, it's a cat! put the damned cat down. it's a miserable creature and it is making you miserable. there is nothing wrong with putting such an animal to sleep. it is of no use to itself or to anyone else.

and to the lw who thinks letting the cat outside is some kind of solution: i have friends who right now have a cat just like the one described here, and it lives in the country and has all the access it wishes to the outdoors. that solves nothing. those cat owners, too, are considering euthanasia.

furthermore, it is wrong and cruel and irresponsible to let cats outside. they are not wild animals. they are not a native species. and they kill songbirds, many of them endangered. they also eat poisoned rodents and die. they are killed by owls and hawks and dogs and cars and pesticides. the outdoors is not a safe place for a cat.

there are already too many domesticated cats in the world. put this one out of its misery and then find a nice kitten who likes to be held, who doesn't scratch or bite, who loves visitors and their attentions, and have the pet you deserved in the first place. there are plenty of kittens like that and they make wonderful companions. i have one myself.

It doesn't fix everything, but it helps. I once owned a very temperamental Siamese. Pure-bred, if without papers, he had been at a rescue for well over six months by the time we got him, and had been visited by probably a dozen other interested people before I got to him. He was handsome but ill-tempered and hissed at the other cats there the whole time I was there.

By the time he went to a new owner--a friend, I was moving but he's very happy there now--he was still somewhat picky about being overstimulated, but he could be a total sweetheart and had at least gone so far as to adopt the more typical cat behavior of bolting in the face of strangers instead of trying to bite them.

What did I do? I spoiled him. He had been abandoned, not as a kitten but as an adult, left behind by some previous owner and finally picked up by a compassionate neighbor. So, I sat with him, I went through dozens of kinds of food to find what he liked best, gave him little bits of turkey out of my sandwiches and woke up at 5am to give him breakfast when he decided that was when he wanted to be fed. We played, sometimes, but he generally only wanted to play with things which resembled real small creatures--feathers and fur, catnip did nothing for him. Mostly, I sat with him next to me on the couch while I used my laptop, let him curl up with me in bed when he felt ready to do so, offered a lap whenever he wanted it. And in time, I was not the enemy anymore.

Granted, I was probably more of a servant than a best buddy, but he's doing even better now with my friend, who has more free time than I had. He will never be the super-cuddly-kitten type, but over time he learned to trust that no one was going to steal his food, that he would be fed every day, that I would come home again to him. I still had to be careful not to push him too far--only pet on his terms, no roughhousing, no shouting at him no matter what he did--but over time he softened considerably.

My grandparents followed a similar process with a former abused stray who recently passed away a sleepy old-man cat instead of the hostile ankle-attacker he was when they first got him.

The professional help idea is probably good, but if you want a place to start from, treat him like you'd treat a foster child from an abused background. People will probably make fun of you for doing it, but those same people, I noticed, were the same ones who later wondered why my cats are so much more affectionate than theirs are. On the whole, if you treat them like family they behave like family. If you treat them like animals they behave like animals. I prefer family.