How Often Do Your Cats Fight?

[Tabbytha]

Hi, here's a question for those with multi-cat households - how often do your cats fight? Daily? Hourly? Once in a blue moon? Never?

My two cats fight EVERY SINGLE DAY, usually 3-4 times a day. It's really starting to wear me down. This is our situation - I hope someone can help offer advice:

Cat 1 is the alpha cat but generally pretty chill - he's good around other cats and was the patient foster brother to many cats. He was adored by Cat 2 when she was a kitten, which was one of the reasons we adopted her and decided to have two cats.

Cat 2 is quite an anxious kitty though. She was a bottle baby (she came to us a foster at 3 weeks old - see my profile pic ) and has some 'unusual' traits. She is cuddly but only when it's on her own terms - if we go to pick her up she'll yowl and boy, does she have loud vocal chords!

The fighting begins when Cat 1 is either trying to clean Cat 2 and she's had enough, or he's playing with her and she doesn't like it, or he's being too bossy - I've seen all these scenarios play out. Then Cat 2 yowls and wails and it's a fur flying frenzy. Part of the issue is that she's so loud, so the fights will wake us up or interrupt work (as I work from home) etc.

We've had Cat 2 checked out by two different vets and neither can see anything wrong with her as an indication on why she is so vocal and anxious. The puzzling thing is that when we separate Cat 1 and Cat 2, she'll sit by the door of the room he's in and when he come out she'll nuzzle him. If she's closed away, she just non-stop yowls, so that's a bad idea. And when they're not fighting, they're cuddled up and being so cute together. Our house is big so they have lots of room with many cat posts etc but they choose to hang out together (again, confusing).

I've got a Feliway spray bottle I use a couple of times a day and I just bought the Feliway plug-in. I clap loudly to get them to stop fighting and have taken to spritzing them with water, which breaks up the fight but am not sure if that's a good thing to do (but neither is shouting).

I want to minimise the instances of fighting but I'm at a loss. It's getting to the point we're we thinking of rehoming Cat 2, but I know i couldn't go through with that Today we started talking about it after they had two fights in the morning, but I look at them now cuddled up and it just breaks my heart to think about.

Can it get better, or have my cats just grown to antogonise each other part of the time?

 

[jen]

It would be really awesome if you could catch them behaving this way on video! But that being said, if there is no blood shed, this is just them communicating with each other. If they didn't get along they would have severely injured each other by now. The fact that they cuddle together and play and are grooming each other tells me they get along fine. Cats NEED to tell each other when they had enough, and yours are doing just that. It may be louder then you like but they are COMMUNICATING. They need to do this to learn the others boundaries.

Maybe you can seperate them at night so they don't wake you? My cats are 15 years old and will lay together and groom each other, but other days one just looks at the other funny and they snarl and growl and swat. That is how they communicate. I cannot stress that enough. It is like human siblings who have minor spats or yell when they don't like what the other is doing. I firmly believe that when people don't allow their cats to communicate with each other or punish them from doing so, they end up with neurotic cats.

You said you tried Feliway, you could try calming collars. You can put a little pure vanilla extract on them so they smell alike. I don't think you mentioned how old they are. If one is still young, the older one will be vocal or seem to be "fighting" to teach the younger one. The younger one might seem aggressive and the older one will teach...

 

[Tabbytha]

Thanks for your reply Jen, I appreciate it. Cat 1 (Ed) is five years old and Cat 2 (Cutie) is three years old.

I haven't heard of calming collars, I'll look them up.

The problem with separating them at night is that Cat 2 is very vocal when she's separated from Cat 1 as well - she makes these long sad sounding mewls.

Good idea about filming them - I'm usually so frenzied trying to get them to stop that I hadn't thought of that. I just took this pic of them now. You wouldn't think that they battled it out twice today from looking at how cosy they look now. Maybe they've called a truce due to the cold weather here today?!

 

[jen]

That is a picture of 2 cats who like each other. I wonder if the vocal one has some Siamese in its background.... Sounds to me like they are just very rambunctious, playful, vocal kids and the volume bothers you more then it bothers them

 

[Tabbytha]

Forgot to add that there's never bloodshed, just a lot of noise! I wonder if because Cutie (Cat 2 - have no idea why I'm using the names interchangeably, sorry!) was a bottle baby and missed out on some socialising with her siblings and mumma that's why she reacts in such an extreme way.

 

[jen]

That could very well be it too. Or a combination of everything.

 

[danteshuman]

My 2 boys squabble. Dante hunts Salem...Salem gets annoyed and growls (and sometimes moves away) .... I tell them both to knock it off and threaten belly rubs. If I don't intervene a couple times a week Dante jumps on Salem, bites him between the shoulder blades and Salem runs off. This happens where I hear a growl every day..... mutoliple times a day.

Now ?once a month? Every other month? Or so Dante gets into it with our semi-feral Chester. Chester gets a good belly shot in, Dante yeowls, the end. Since no blood, no fur, no cat fight sounds I let it play out... but I will come investigate if I hear a yeowl. Honestly Dante is a punk and I think it might be karma

It might be worth filming their fights to see if it is play or not. My punk needs to burn off his energy or he treats his brother like a living toy. So what helps is giving Salem a Dante free spot and playing with my punk every night before I go to bed. That and an hour a day where my punk 'hunts' birds in the backyard keeps me from shaving him