Pets

She was normally pretty gentle, though sometimes a bit temperamental - if you did something that bothered her (she hated being stepped over, for example), she'd hiss at you. I got her when she was just a kitten, so prior trauma didn't explain her occasional prickliness. I especially recall one time when she went after my ankles, not playing at all, and I had to hold her away with a broom while she screeched and swatted at me, and I have no idea what got her going. Sometimes that sort of behavior is displacement; maybe she had got into it with one of the other cats and took it out on me. She'd also get worked up sometimes if she saw other cats outside. So maybe it was something like that?