my mum's cat is around 8 yrs old and very vicious you only have to walk past her without touching and she spits and growls at you just like a dog , and sometimes depends on her moods she is nice and sits on your knee , we keep telling her she is going to cats home if she doesn't stop but no one could put up with her like we do she has gone for us and scratched our arms what can we do i have the sister to her and she isn't as bad

has she always been like this, do u think she is in any kind of pain

My nieghbour had a cat that was an absolute horror,if ever i went round to feed him while they were away, I had to back out of the door with a cushion in front of my legs, to stop him attacking,
when we went to the vets with him the vet had to wear those huge protective gloves,or he wouldn't touch him.
but he had always been like it.
Then sometimes he would come purring round me but the minute you went to stroke him he would attack

You just have to accept that some cats are lap cats and some cats are not happy being handled. She's probably a nervous cat, so trying to pick her up just stresses her out more.

There is a product you could try called Felifriend. It's used by groomers and handlers to help to calm stressed cats - it works along the same lines as Feliway, a product designed to chill out cats - Feliway is available as either a plug in diffuser or a spray and it emits cat=friendly pheromones. I've used Feliway plug in and spray but not had reason to buy the felifriend yet. You can buy it from nutrecare.co.uk or other online vet pharmacies

^^^What she said.

If she finds it hard to cope with people being close then there's not a lot that you can do about it apart from trying things like Felifriend.

She sounds very much like my cat Baby, who is a hand reared feral. She's mostly a house cat, but in the event of anything happening that makes her nervous she reverts straight back to being a feral cat and is really not responsible for her actions. On one occasion (at least) this has included getting nervous about the dog being across the doorway to the room and as a result running straight into the room when she was perfectly safe and 15 feet away from the dog before hand.