My husband and I hope you can help us with our five-year-old female cat, Rumbler. We’ve had her since she was eight weeks old. We have no children, so she’s our baby.

Since early August, she’s become aggressive. We’re heartbroken over this and just want to help her. Since we don’t have any other animals in the house, we think the problem might stem from two things.

First, my husband was diagnosed with cancer last fall. He had surgery and was given the all clear, but it was a complete shock, and we’re still nervous about it, especially since we’re coming up on the one-year anniversary. All his follow-up tests and appointments are stressful, and neither of us handles stress very well.

Second, there is major construction going on behind us. We live in a subdivision, but our backyard backs onto a field. The field is now being turned into a subdivision. They started by taking down all the trees and have been at it off and on with gigantic trucks moving dirt and so forth. The construction will be hot and heavy for a few weeks and then stop for a couple. The big trucks are very loud and vibrate the house. I had to take our pictures off the wall because they rattled so much!