Quora Question

Compared to my brother in law, whom the cat does not trust in the least and runs away immediately, my cat comes out of hiding and greets me whenever he sees me. The problem is, when he see my in-law try to interact with him, we will immediately run away from fear. With me however, he seems to take out is agitation on me instead! Whenever I try to pet him he immediately tries to nip me, and whenever I start agitating him to get him to leave me alone or discipline him, he instead rises on his hind legs and starts swatting my hand away! So I tested this theory today I poking him, tickling him, rubbing his feet, curling his tail, tickling his whiskers, doing all sorts of things that would agitate a normal cat, and no matter how much I pissed him off, instead of just running away in fear, he retaliates back in anger! Sometimes he even chases my hand to get sweet revenge! I have no clue why I'm the only one he does this to, and no I don't give any verbal indication that I don't like his behavior, I never shout infront of my cats, but when I was trying to annoy him to see his reaction, he tries to get even with me instead of just running away! I do not believe this is a sign of cat aggression however. He is neutreded, 2 years old, whenever he does try to nip or swat me, he never flattens his ears or hisses at me, but he always, Always, ALWAYS! has a flehman's mouth when he does this to me, and seems to always come back for more. At this point I'm assuming he does it because he likes the taste of my fingers, or maybe he likes to take out his stress on me! But so far I'm the only person he does this with, its not out of fear or anger, and he runs away from other people who pester him like that. So if he doesn't like it when I touch him in a way that he finds uncomfortable, why doesn't he just run under the bed like other cats do?