Cat Fights

Factual Questions
1

No, with real cats. Perv.

Anyway.

My cat goes outside, and from time to time he has a dispute with another cat. These seem to go one of two ways.

The first is a highly stylized and very long drawn out affair where all of the decision making seems to be done before there is any contact. They stare, make those “MRRowwAAWWworrRR” noises at one another, hiss for long periods of time, and then make two or three brief passes with the pointy bits after which the other cat spends 10 minutes walking out of the yard and glaring back in a threatening manner.

The last one I saw was silent except for some brief hissing at the moment of contact and the sound of their bodies slamming into the garage and the lawn furniture. The actual fighting part went on much longer than the pauses to stare, and they wound up (according to what I saw anyway) rolling sideways up an eight foot fence while biting one another. The next day, the area they’d chosen to face off in was covered in cat hair. I was surprised not to see body parts.

Anthropomorphist that I am, I am inclined to interpret this as two different kinds of conflict, the first being a “for show” scuffle where the loser just wants to save face, and the second being a real fight.

Can any cat behaviour experts enlighten me on whether this is even close to correct?

2

Cats are very territorial. When they go outside, like yours does, a large part of their life is centered around establishing and maintaining their turf. The stronger a cat is, the larger territory it can take and hold. It sounds like you saw two versions of this. In one, your cat established through posturing that it was the badder cat, and the cat trying to make a move into his territory backed off. In the other, the other cat thought he could take your yard, and made a serious move for it.

Your cat will, of course, eventually lose one of these fights. Outside cats have a much shorter average life than inside cats.

3

That’s my reading of it too. I’ve seen cats take on full-grown foxes who have encroached on their turf as well (and win decisively).

The entertaining moments are when you get three cats together in a staring match at the edges of their respective territories. The zanshin is almost palpable.