sign of dominance

[rang_27]

I volenteer at a shelter and this past weekend, I noticed that one of the cats was grabbing it's cage mate by the neck with his mouth (both cat's are fixed). When I asked someone about it she said it was a show of dominance. Now I've heard of this in dogs, but never in cats. I was wondering if anyone else has ever heard of this & is it a common thing that I just am not farmiliar with because I only have one cat.

 

[hissy]

It's actual a subtle show of aggression and the two cats should be separated pretty quickly before it grows into a full on confrontation. Give it time, if they share the same cage, it will too.

 

[angelzoo]

Yeah. Asim does it all the time. I too had never seen a cat do this until maybe a year ago.

Asim does it to Tage and Isha. I break it up sometimes. But with him and Tage it never comes out to any thing other then them just playing. With Isha... he likes to chase her around the house and rip balls of fur out of her.

It's kinda problem here... though MUCH better this past month, and hopefully will continue in this manner.

 

[lorie d.]

When we had two cats, Snowball was the alpha, and I saw him do this to our other cat a couple of times. Both times we separated the cats briefly, but the behavior never developed into anything more serious.

 

[snipboy]

One of my cats started doing this recently, and it is utterly bizarre. It's the young kitty, Noah. He's 4 months old. We have another kitten, Steven, who is roughly 9 months old. Noah seems to get into this stuppor, typically after awaking from a nap, and he will just sink his teeth into Steven's neck. Steven will just sit there paralyzed and wine, as if he is having the blood sucked from his neck. Occassionally Steven will just get up and leave. But it is so strange. Noah will go back to sleep, and then awake and do it again, then go back to sleep. Very, very odd.

Odder still, is that he is showing alpha behavior so young. I wonder if we should neuter him now? He's also cryptoorchid, so we were hoping to wait another couple months to see if he would drop that other testicle.

 

[tigger]

I would get him fixed when he gets to be around 6 months old ... They do better at that age. Gizmo & Scooter both showed dominance when they were about 4 months old, too. They used to "mount" Tigger and grab the back of her neck, but they dont do it as much since they are now over a year old.