This is posted on behalf of some friends I’m visiting. They have 3 cats, whom we’ll call A, B and C.
All these cats are: spayed females, tolerably young (under 5 years) and reasonably people-friendly. A & B are rather quiet; C is decidedly more frisky.
Until recently, all three got along well together. But about 6 weeks ago the humans returned to a scene of carnage: C and B had had a violent disagreement that left C in rough shape and B much worse (needed emergency vet attention). Since then, C and B cannot be left alone together - they will always hiss and yowl at each other, and often get into a fight (C seems usually to be the instigator). A remains mostly aloof, though there are some signs of increasing tension between her and C.
Can anything be done to defuse this situation (which if allowed to progress seems likely to end badly)?
This sounds worrisome to me. When cats are first introduced to one another, such as when bringing a new cat into the house, it’s a good plan to put the newcomer into a cage and keep the cage out in the open, with a bit of shelter in some corner in which to hide. This gives them time to get familiar without giving them opportunity to have any big fights that might otherwise make it hard for them ever to coexist. The point here isn’t how to introduce cats, but rather the fact that a big fight can make it hard to coexist long term.
It’s surprising that these cats already coexisted satisfactorily for a while and only then had some kind of serious falling out. It doesn’t fit the normal picture. Perhaps some new arrangement is in order. In any case, it’s unusual in my experience.
That is weird. May be there was a strange outside influence. Lenny and Squiggy got into a very violent brawl once each thinking the other was a stranger.
Some nasty tomcat in the neighborhood had taken exception to the presence of Lenny and Squiggy and had sprayed our sliding glass doors and screen. A few days later, Squiggy was carefully sniffing the screen from the inside - “How dare some nasty Intruder Cat mark our screen!” - when Lenny walked over to sniff the screen beside him.
Squiggy, not the being the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, went from thoroughly examining the scent of Intruder Cat, to having a cat face right next to him. At the sudden appearance of Lenny, the dimbulb’s instincts were :eek: “Intruder Cat!!!” and screaming and violence did ensue. Scared the crap out of me, my roommate, and the neighbors (lots and lots of cat screaming), and poor Lenny was puffed up, panting and totally bewildered as to why the hell he’d found himself fighting for his life two minutes ago.
There were no long-term repercussions in this case. Probably because they attributed the fight to the absent Intruder Cat rather than each other. Once the fur settled and everyone calmed down, the two bozos teamed up looking for their common enemy.
“Which way did he go?”
“I dunno, he attacked out of nowhere!”
“I know, I never even saw him!”
When I was in high school, we adopted 2 calico females from the same litter. We got them spayed at the same time. They were friendly (sleeping in kitty balls, grooming each other) until one day they suddenly hated each other (exact timeline is a little fuzzy but between 1-2 years after we got them). They hated each other for over 15 years. We never could figure out why they went from cuddly littermates to arch enemies.
We moved our ancient, decrepit, so-old-he’d-lost-all-his-prodigious-fat cat into a new house that came with a grumpy, uncivilized, young barn cat who we proceeded to adjust to indoor living. Young cat would mercilessly beat up on old cat until we trained our big German Shepard that when cats fight, and only when cats fight, it is acceptable to chase them down and thwack them with his forepaw, as is his chiefest desire in life.
With the negative reinforcement of being heartily thwacked and barked at every time he started a fight, young cat quickly gave up the habit and became pretty amiable. Our negative reinforcement system even worked when we weren’t home!
I’d guess this is the most likely culprit. Cats are oddly prone to redirected aggression. This seems particularly true with indoor cats that regard any intruder cats as hostile ( I don’t worry much about mine, they’re curious rather than hostile to strange animals in the yard ). The above link has some advice on things that can be done, but just how lingering the psychic trauma can be is pretty variable, as can be seen from Glory and Swallowed’s examples.
Not exactly the same situation, but our daughter has four cats, all of whom get along all right. After several years, Cat Z suiddenly started spraying all over the house, resulting in a horrible stench. He had been fixed, but still…
She finally deduced it was because several feral cats were prowling around outside, driving him nuts. They have lots of windows and sliders, so no way to keep him from seeing the outside guys. If you ever smelled cat spray, you will understand the problem.
She tried all sorts of things to no avail, and finally went to the vet. An exam showed him to be fine, so the only advice was to try Prozac. She hesitated, but finally in despeation, tried it. The cat seems pretty zonked out and sleeps more than usual, but it has stopped the agitation that resulted in spraying.
I’d suggest you talk to a vet about the problem to see if there is any other thing hat can be done (other than training an attack dog to stop the fights :D). If not, you can ask about Prozac or some other tranquilizer to see if it works. You may have a couple of real feline dopers , but it might also stop the travail. .