Hi All - I've posted in here before with some questions about my cats. Things have recently developed and become more complicated. I have two cats, Toby (8 years old) and Archie (7 years old). About 1 year ago, Toby had a tail injury where his tail was caught in the door. Ever since, he has been having episodes of overgrooming and hyperactivity where he has severe zoomies around the house. He also developed tail chasing behavior. We tried pain medications, sedatives, pheromones, calming supplements, none of which worked - over time, we were able to calm his issues relatively well by doing interactive feeders, more enrichment in the home, clicker training, and play time every morning before I went to work. He also has significant separation anxiety, and humps his crinkle bag/caterwauls every time we leave the home.
We went on vacation over Christmas, and left them with a sitter who did minimal play time with them - when we returned from vacation, Toby seemed much more calm and like his normal self (pre-tail injury). I resumed their normal routine of play in the mornings, clicker training in the evenings, and Toby started to get worse, with more vocalization, zoomies, and hyperactivity episodes. He also started meowing loudly any time he was in the litterbox (he has been doing this for months, so no medical issues). I went out of town and left the two cats with my husband 1.5 weeks ago - he did minimal interaction/play with them, and when I came home, Toby seemed much better and calmer again. This led me to believe perhaps the morning play time was what was making them anxious/hyperactive. The past 1.5 weeks, I have held off on playing with them in the mornings. For about 1 week, this helped things a lot - both cats were much calmer and there was less humping and vocalization. However, yesterday, I played with them briefly for about 5 minutes with a string - afterwards, they got into a huge fight and chased each other around the apartment. They did the same thing this morning, and were following me all over meowing and wanting to play.
I feel very torn on how to interact with them - initially, not playing with them anymore helped - however, now I feel guilty not playing with them and I feel like they have pent up energy that they don't know what to do with, and may be channeling that energy into fighting. Have any of you ever had issues with play with cats, especially multiple cats?
We went on vacation over Christmas, and left them with a sitter who did minimal play time with them - when we returned from vacation, Toby seemed much more calm and like his normal self (pre-tail injury). I resumed their normal routine of play in the mornings, clicker training in the evenings, and Toby started to get worse, with more vocalization, zoomies, and hyperactivity episodes. He also started meowing loudly any time he was in the litterbox (he has been doing this for months, so no medical issues). I went out of town and left the two cats with my husband 1.5 weeks ago - he did minimal interaction/play with them, and when I came home, Toby seemed much better and calmer again. This led me to believe perhaps the morning play time was what was making them anxious/hyperactive. The past 1.5 weeks, I have held off on playing with them in the mornings. For about 1 week, this helped things a lot - both cats were much calmer and there was less humping and vocalization. However, yesterday, I played with them briefly for about 5 minutes with a string - afterwards, they got into a huge fight and chased each other around the apartment. They did the same thing this morning, and were following me all over meowing and wanting to play.
I feel very torn on how to interact with them - initially, not playing with them anymore helped - however, now I feel guilty not playing with them and I feel like they have pent up energy that they don't know what to do with, and may be channeling that energy into fighting. Have any of you ever had issues with play with cats, especially multiple cats?
