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- Aug 11, 2020
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Hello everyone, I've had a new kitten for about a week now and I'm getting a bit worried that I might be doing something wrong. I found this site by googling around for similar situations and found a post titled Older Cat Biting New Kitten's Neck... which is quite similar to what I'm experiencing. I'll add some context and maybe shed some light on how this might be different.
For starters, my first cat Cosmo is a 2.5 year old very sweet fixed male. He's extremely relaxed about being picked up, cuddling etc. He just has a generally very easy going attitude towards us. My fiance and I have been talking about getting another pet recently and heard that a friend of a friend had a litter. So the new female kitten appears to be 8 weeks old and is of course very very playful but also very small - about 2 lbs. She's got her own room set up in our office where I work from home. Obviously this was not a big secret to Cosmo who became very agitated that he could no longer hang out with us in the office while we kept the two separate. After about a day we let them see each other through a baby-gate and Cosmo's eyes dilated like he had just seen a bug that he wanted to chase and kill. Although there was no hissing or growling, this made me extremely nervous (in fact I would have been less alarmed if he gave her such warning signs instead of acting like he would just jump her) so we kept them completely separate for about another day.
When we tried to introduce them again everything seemed alright. Cosmo got a very good set of sniffs in and only lightly patted her on the the top of the head. We started feeding them together and that went quite well also, neither of them really acknowledged each other and now they eat right next to each other. The problem comes when we try to intermingle them during play-time (play-time for the kitten, Cosmo is not interested in playing around her really) This is when Cosmo gets very aggressive, but less in a dominating sense and more in what appears to be a predatory sense. Again, there has been no hissing or growling at all. Instead, Cosmo will wait for her to either turn her back or flip upside down playing with a toy before wiggling his but and jumping on top of her. The first time he did this he pinned her down, ears back and eyes wide. We immediately separated them for a while but when we got them back together, he instead started angling around her, trying to get out of both our sight and hers. So now every time they are together he is trying to find a way to attack her, usually trying to nip at her neck. When we hold them in close proximity, it's just swatting and lunging.
As a concerned parent of this new kitten, my biggest fear is that Cosmo is of course going to make himself an only-cat again by swiftly removing his new little sister from the equation. I understand cats have to establish a hierarchy like this, but this behavior seems more harmful than it does disciplinary. Is this simply going to take approximately the time it's going to take for the kitten to grow big enough not to be killed in one chomp, or should I actually let Cosmo get a good cuff on her, and if so how do I know it won't be lethal? I know a week isn't a long time but I really want to make sure I do this right and don't set Cosmo up to just loathe his little sister for the rest of time.
For starters, my first cat Cosmo is a 2.5 year old very sweet fixed male. He's extremely relaxed about being picked up, cuddling etc. He just has a generally very easy going attitude towards us. My fiance and I have been talking about getting another pet recently and heard that a friend of a friend had a litter. So the new female kitten appears to be 8 weeks old and is of course very very playful but also very small - about 2 lbs. She's got her own room set up in our office where I work from home. Obviously this was not a big secret to Cosmo who became very agitated that he could no longer hang out with us in the office while we kept the two separate. After about a day we let them see each other through a baby-gate and Cosmo's eyes dilated like he had just seen a bug that he wanted to chase and kill. Although there was no hissing or growling, this made me extremely nervous (in fact I would have been less alarmed if he gave her such warning signs instead of acting like he would just jump her) so we kept them completely separate for about another day.
When we tried to introduce them again everything seemed alright. Cosmo got a very good set of sniffs in and only lightly patted her on the the top of the head. We started feeding them together and that went quite well also, neither of them really acknowledged each other and now they eat right next to each other. The problem comes when we try to intermingle them during play-time (play-time for the kitten, Cosmo is not interested in playing around her really) This is when Cosmo gets very aggressive, but less in a dominating sense and more in what appears to be a predatory sense. Again, there has been no hissing or growling at all. Instead, Cosmo will wait for her to either turn her back or flip upside down playing with a toy before wiggling his but and jumping on top of her. The first time he did this he pinned her down, ears back and eyes wide. We immediately separated them for a while but when we got them back together, he instead started angling around her, trying to get out of both our sight and hers. So now every time they are together he is trying to find a way to attack her, usually trying to nip at her neck. When we hold them in close proximity, it's just swatting and lunging.
As a concerned parent of this new kitten, my biggest fear is that Cosmo is of course going to make himself an only-cat again by swiftly removing his new little sister from the equation. I understand cats have to establish a hierarchy like this, but this behavior seems more harmful than it does disciplinary. Is this simply going to take approximately the time it's going to take for the kitten to grow big enough not to be killed in one chomp, or should I actually let Cosmo get a good cuff on her, and if so how do I know it won't be lethal? I know a week isn't a long time but I really want to make sure I do this right and don't set Cosmo up to just loathe his little sister for the rest of time.