Kitty death match
I don’t know what’s wrong with my cats. Early yesterday morning, I was awoken to the sounds normally reserved for other kitty — an outside visitor cat on the other side of the glass. We have attracted at least one other other kitty because I’ve seen it more than once. And I thought I saw another one slinking away the other night when I got home.
So my first reaction was that other kitty had gotten someone riled up. Other kitty might even be indirectly responsible for the kitty death match now.
Ziggy and Merlin have been fighting like demons, like the war of good and evil between Anakin and Obi-Wan. And Ziggy is Obi-Wan. Ever patient, wise, he often endures the abuse of Merlin, who is two years his junior.
Maybe he’s just had enough.
All I know is that I think it’s died down, then they give each other a sniff, walk past, and I look away, and the next thing I know, there are terrible squeals and hisses. Ziggy is cowering, fighting for his life. Merlin’s tail is puffed up to three times its size.
I don’t want Merlin to end up a burned husk put in a suit. And I don’t want to continue locking him outside of my bedroom. He’s the bad one, yet Ziggy is the one locked up. Ziggy has taken to hiding in all sorts of places in my room. He’s allowed me to hold him for long periods of time, all because he’s afraid.
That’s not Obi-Wan behavior. My cat is, in fact, a coward. And Merlin probably hasn’t been all that mean to him.
But as soon as Ziggy starts hissing or growling at him, Merlin takes that as an invitation for fighting again.
These two cats have been like brothers for nearly three years. They often engage in mostly friendly combat, in which Merlin is often the instigator. I
In a strange twist, Ziggy is getting along perfectly fine with the oldest member of my cat family. Stinky hates the other cats, yet she’s been surprisingly calm through all this. Even sat very close to Ziggy this morning.
And Merlin howls outside my door all night long.
very very strange. and you have no idea why this started all of a sudden? no hypthoses?
No idea. I had a number of early theories, which seemed less and less likely as time went on. Perhaps O.K. spooked Merlin, who then took it out on Ziggy. Or perhaps Merlin smells somehow different. Heather tells me he smells like Ton-Ton (And I thought they smelled bad… on the outside!) I admit I haven’t gotten a good sniff because I have no interest in finding out what Ton-Ton smells like. But maybe I’d better go change the litter downstairs.
Ziggy’s downstairs right now, and is strangely needy and affectionate. He spent a couple of hours with me just sleeping as I watched TV. I shouldn’t admit that I kind of like him that way. On the other hand, I have no intention of spending the next 10-15 years of my life locking one out of my bedroom and one in.
Seems to be calming down a bit, but I think it could erupt again at any moment.
I guess there’s no such thing as obedience school for cats, eh? Bummer.
No, because cats are too smart for obedience. Or too stubborn.
But it seems to have died down a bit.
Do cats remember antagonisms? Do they remember anything? Bruce just keeps repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Glad things are calming down for you.
I think they can be conditioned, and at least have a short-term memory of some things. And an ingrained long-term memory for others… My almost 15-year-old cat still has a fear of plastic bags from when she was 3 or 4.
They do have memory. They just choose to use it in different ways.
I like to think that when they’re naughty, they forget that they’re not supposed to be up on the counter or fighting with a sibling for the 10th time. Much like my stepbrother “forgets” that he’s not supposed to eat in the living room.
The only way for the cats to remember something, or for them to care about remembering something, is if something traumatic happens to them to curb the behavior.
But I don’t know what stopped the death match, or what started it, since it didn’t appear to be sparked by anything different.
Could they be reacting to the new move? Has yours, or Heather’s, scheduled changed any? You know how cats just HATE change.
There don’t seem to be any changes that should have affected them. I thought that much earlier about Merlin’s bathroom problems, but it’d been a month since any kind of change before that, and it’d been fine.
And the move… they’ve been settled in for a reasonable amount of time.
But my cats do strange things. Merlin’s bathroom problems turned out to be in part rooted in his fear of the automatic litter box. Was probably not helped by the fact that his stomach wasn’t dealing very well with the food I had been giving him.
I still haven’t managed to get him back on the nice box, after the aborted attempt at the other place to wean him back.
I’ve just given up, and hope that eventually he’ll come to realize that going to the potty in a nice clean litter box every single time is much better than going in one where I don’t change or scoop it for several days at a time.