I have two very mischievious siamese cats. They are brother and sister, the female is much larger than the male, and they are both extremely rambunctious. I have to say I love watching them sneak up on each other when one is unsuspecting, and then pounce out of the clear blue sky and rumble on the ground. They grab each other by the neck and pull themselves down onto the rug and kick with their back feet. It is the funniest and most cute thing when they are really going at it. Or when one of them scares the bejeezus out of the other and the scared one puffs up like the stay puft marshmallow man - that is so damn funny.
Am I some kind of feline sadist? Or do others like to watch their cats tousle around on the floor and play fight throughout the house?
I like it as long as there’s no hissing and meowing involved. I often can’t tell the difference between “We’re just playing!” and “I kill you now” and the sound effects only make it harder. So as long they’re quiet, I assume they’re just playing.
When one of them starts hissing, I yell out: “Ya’ll stop it!” And then they scurry away to the other room, where they can play in private.
Hmm, should I respond since the OP’s violated the Cardinal Rule of SDMB Cat Threads (i.e. no kitty pics)?
I enjoy it when they’re just horsing around, but for some reason, Heket, the mother cat, will suddenly lash out her daughter, Squeaker, for no reason, and I interviene then, but otherwise, I just let 'em wrestle around. It was really funny when I had all the kittens. They’d be battling one another “fiercely” and then Heket would show up with a, “Oh, so you think you’re tough, do ya? I’ll show you who’s tough!” and then proceed to swat the lot of them around the house.
The cats entertain us pretty much non-stop. They’re really rambunctious most of the time. Not too much hissing, with the exception of Miss Bitchypants, who’s perpetually pissed off at everything and eveyone. But she’s still very cool. Oodles of fun!
As long as they’re not doing it on the stairs, or where they’ll upset the dog, yeah, I think it’s cute to watch them wrassle. I observe to make sure no one gets hurt, but that’s about it.
I have two cats, a boy and a girl, ~3.5 yrs old. They’re not from the same litter, but they’ve been growing up together since they were 8 weeks old, so they are essentially brother and sister.
The boy is frisky and likes to play-fight. The girl is kind of a grouch and likes to pretend she’s not enjoying it. He pounces, and she growls and hisses and moans, but she’s having fun. If he stops, she provokes him until he attacks again. Also, she weighs twice what he does (12 pounds to his 6 pounds), so she’s got the advantage.
Frequently, he will pounce on her, and she will grab him so that his head is between her back legs. Then she “kangaroo kicks” him in the head over and over again. What makes me laugh is, he lets her. After a good kicking, he’ll pull his head up, shake it hard, and lick his lips. The look on his face plainly says, “Damn! That was fun!” Then, after he catches his breath, he goes in for more.
So yeah, I think it’s hilarious. Sometimes I even yell, “Kill, kill! Fight, fight! Go for blood!” Which is funny because it’s ridiculous. They’re indoor kitties with seriously blunted instincts. We get mice in the house sometimes. The two of them will hunt a mouse relentlessly, but when they actually catch it, they don’t know what to do. They’re actually kind of gentle with them, as if they’re thinking, “Crap, if we break this toy, Mom will probably get mad.” So yeah, they don’t really do anything that would hurt each other. It’s just kitty wrasslin’. If thinking it’s funny is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
To answer the OP’s question, as if it wasn’t answered well enough already – to judge by the quantity of video posted at youtube of wrasslin’, pouncin’, boxin’ cats, no. You’re not the only one.
I love watching all three of my dogs play-fight. I’ve seen the evolution of their “fighting styles” and you can really tell a dog’s intelligence from it. The youngest, a Jack Russel Terrier, has learned that he can use my middle dog’s size against her. If he runs beneath her belly and attacks her legs from beneath, she can’t reach him.
The eldest dog (and largest) doesn’t want to play-fight as much, but when she agrees, there’s a strict code at work. The middle dog attacks the eldest dog with the smallest dog attacking the middle. This pattern is never varied. The youngest and the eldest never play-fight directly together. (It tends to turn into a real quarrel, so they have learned to avoid it.)
All of them have the same *“Back off! That hurts!” *cry, and they all respect it. When one of them squeals, play instantly stops and they wait until the one which squealed indicates it’s okay for play to resume.
The two younger dogs also “sword fight” with open mouths. Making high-pitched growls, they parry their bared teeth at one another, banging their snouts together until they either silently agree on a winner or get tired of the game.
Collar-tug is another of their favorites. They drag one another around the room, play-growling and try to knock each other off balance. (The JRT has learned quickly that if he tugs the middle dog’s collar back and downward, she loses her balance quickly.) They also seem to appreciate the collars as padding-- they will only put their teeth around one another’s necks if the collar is present.
So, yeah, I enjoy watching them fight. I study their techniques.
I got tickled at two of mine the other day. Mr. Spock and Bill the Cat are both on the fat side of large, and I looked over to see them “fighting”. The fat cat’s version of fighting involves lying on the side facing the opponent and lazily taking swipes at each other.
Mine are 7 years old, male and female, not from the same litter, but like Q.N. Jones, raised together from about 8 weeks on. Oscar, my big boy, is MEAN. Emmy’s kind of a wimp, but Oscar will beat the sh*t out of her if I don’t intervene. She nearly took his eye out once (literally - he had a big gash, and he’s lucky he didn’t lose his eye), but even that hasn’t deterred him.
So yeah, we let it go on for a few minutes, hoping Emmy will haul off and knock him senseless, but most of the time, we have to step in and get him off of her.
I think that’s because “We’re just playing!” can turn to “I kill you now!” in seconds.
We have a mother and daughter cat that really go at each other sometimes. Mama, who ordinarily is the most docile cat in the world, will put her ears back and howl at her daughter to the point I don’t know if she’s really pissed or just playing. Then two seconds later she’s all bouncy and pouncy. I do love to watch the cats ambush each other. The best is when one is waiting around the corner, knowing another is heading that way. The little butt wiggle they do is priceless.
Ours is too one sided to be fun. We have a 14 year old 6-pounder and a 4 year old 13 pounder who the WNBA has been out to scout for her upper body strength and incredible wingspan. Every once in a while they keep it subtle, spy-vs.-spy, which is funny, but in general I don’t think these two play, I think it’s for keepsies.
I had to get Pi (formerly Popeye) his own kitten because none of the other cats would play with him anymore because he’s too rough. Little Luna started wrassling with him when she was still tiny and now she’s catching up in size and likely to be fatter than him so he’s getting a taste of his own medicine. She’s relentless, too. My biggest worry is that she might take out his eye (he only has one). What’s funny is that Luna is an absolute sweetie to everyone else.
We have 2.5 year old siblings, both ginger tabbies, one male and one female. Our basement has a sliding glass door to the outside, which provides a wonderful opportunity for the outdoor cats in the neighborhood to harass our indoor cats. Once an outdoor cat has gotten Diana and Mercury into an aroused state of hissing, spitting and growling, it calmly walk aways, leaving our cats to take out their anger and frustration on each other. Fortunately they’ve never done each other serious injury, but we do find clumps of orange fur with some regularity.
We had that, but we trained the dog to do it for us. He knew exactly which cat he was supposed to protect, and at the slightest howl, he’d go scampering in there and bulldoze them apart.
With the cats we’ve got now, fights are a little more evenly matched, so we let them go. The younger one always starts it, the older cat always finishes it, because he’s got about eight pounds on the younger one. Always fun to watch.
Hell, I wish two of my cats WOULD play fight. I have three cats, all male, two from the same litter, the other (a kitten) not. The two brothers play with the kitten well enough, but whenever they start to play with each other, it turns out into an incestual, gay lovefest with one fighting to be on top. I know it’s more than likely dominence but it’s still weird seeing them do it o.O
Sure. It’s a barrel of fun. Mine are both still kittens ( 8 & 9 months respectively, unrelated but pretty much instant littermates from their first introduction ) and they spend part of every day wrestling and chasing each other around.
The younger, more sociable and feistier of the two starts the sparring more often than not ( and he’ll happily try to play with my neighbor’s pitbull puppy and any other creature or object that enters my house ). But also more often than not when it starts getting rougher he’s the one who ends up getting thrashed and starts complaining and hissing defensively. This despite the fact that they’re roughly the same size. I find the whole social dynamic between the two kind of mildly fascinating.
In fact sometimes it’s almost literally a barrel. If I put their cat carrier up on the bed or somewhere else novel ( it’s usually on the floor beside the bed and one or the other occasionally sleeps in it ), first one then the other will charge in to investigate. When they’re both in they’ll often start wrestling in the confined space and the carrier will start rocking back in forth with their exertions until one of them is finally expelled at great speed. It’s a hoot :p!
I love it when Boris and Natasha (2 1/2 year old littermates play fight). They treat each other just like siblings. Natasha will walk by and Boris will just reach out a paw and trip her. One time I swear he got her in a headlock and was licking her ears. I call it the kitty noogie. They seem evenly matched because they chase each other around the house. They’ll also stalk each other from opposite ends of the kitchen island, or from opposite sides of a door. When they wrestle, Boris usually ends up on top with Natasha kicking up at him, but if I walk in they’ll freeze and look up at me with a look that says “We weren’t fighting, honest. We were just hugging each other.”