magnetic_pole

That's what I would have said too, overstimulation. I've had several cats who enjoyed a small amount of petting/stroking but would lash out after a certain point. I've also had cats who bit, sometimes quite hard, in what seemed to be a grooming thing: lick lick lick bite, just the way they do when they're grooming themselves. Cat behavior is much less well studied than dog behavior, and there's a fuckton of nonsense out there even about dog behavior, so who the heck knows.