Mods - feel free to move if I am in the wrong forum).
Help! I need your advice in a hurry (before my husband has some new strings for his fiddle). The story is this:
We had two cats, a middle-aged (Miss Murphy -11 years) female and a feisty younger male (Bernie - 5 years). Both are neutered and declawed. They got along as well as could be expected. Then a new cat was introduced into the household. Georges is young (3 years), neutered and declawed, huge (19 pounds) and comes from a household of many cats. He was introduced into our household in May with what appeared to be a minimum of hissing and spitting and, until recently, things were good. Everyone hung out at the patio window birdwatching or generally lazed about on various pieces of furniture. They are all fed twice daily and the very large self-cleaning litter box is always clean. They are all indoor cats.
Lately, Georges has begun bullying and harassing Miss Murphy, who only wants to be left alone to snooze in her basket and he is also picking fights with Bernie, who can match him in size but not in mass. There is much stürm und drang and Herr 'spiel is kept pretty busy with the squirt gun.
Here’s the kicker – somebody began peeing on the furniture and we can’t figure out who the “peepetrator” is. Our couch and chair were ruined inside of a week and had to be thrown out. Since we needed something to sit on, we went and bought a new couch and chair and brought them into the house last night. As a precaution, DH covered them with plastic before we went to bed. It didn’t work. We awoke this morning to a soaked couch and a puddle on the floor. DH is beyond livid and is threatening a musical career for all three cats.
I need your advice! How do I keep them off the furniture and using the litter box? I am pretty sure this is a “power struggle” kind of thing – they are all recently vet-checked and in good physical health.
