Start by watching My Cat From Hell on the Animal planet. You will learn you need to play with Tonka, wear him out then feed him, he will more than likely go to sleep and leave Creamsicle alone. Don’t punish a cat for being a cat…they don’t understand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Cat_from_Hell
http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/my-cat-from-hell
This. Distract, distract, distract. As others have said, a laser pointer. I also like a toy called “Da Bird” – get the mylar tassel extra clip-on toy in addition to the feather one. The cats go nuts for it.
If you think it’s aggression, I’ve had good luck with Feliway plug-ins and/or spray. It’s supposed to mimic kitties’ “mellow hormone”. It has helped reduce hissy-pissy spats among mine.
Heck, just this morning I saw my (much smaller) female kitten jump on my male kitten in that manner. She loves to start the shit. She doesn’t always like the way it ends up…
It’s a dominance thing, I think. The reason I’ve always heard that male cats scruff a female when mating is because it’s an instinctive means of making another cat submit, going back to the way they were carried around by momma cat when they were tiny.
Oh, and put me down for another “find a distraction” response to stop the behavior.
I try to distract Tonka when he’s being aggressive, but he just runs off onto my bed. He doesn’t like to play with humans for more than five minutes. We’re letting the cats do their own thing, and just keep an eye on Tonka in case he jumps on Creamsicle.
I picked Tonka up and put him in my lap a little while ago. Tonka is not a lap cat. He’ll let ‘mom’ put him in her lap for a few minutes if he’s sleeping and she picks him up, but I think he only has been in my lap twice since we got him. This time he stayed in my lap for over half an hour! Then Creamsicle came over and I pet her on the arm of the couch. When she slowly hopped down, Tonka waited a minute and then got up to see her. Both cats are quiet now.
Believe me with the right toys your Tonka will love to play , there’s the feathers on a wand affair that they can stalk and jump for, and perhaps kill before they lay down exhausted from the vigorous play.
Incredibly true.
One of mine has been called bipolar because sometimes she is incredibly sweet… but other times at night she’ll go for your throat while you sleep. I named her “Goldeneye”.
“No, no, no. No more Cat-play.”
Tonka doesn’t particularly care for the feathers on a wand. He’ll play a little as long as he’s on his ‘perch’, but he won’t chase it. (I’ve tried.) He also won’t chase the mouse-on-a-string, though he loves snatching it when it’s above his head. The only thing he chases is the foil ball. But he won’t do that for long.
Oh, and he likes chasing Creamsicle and being chased by her. She’s chasing him more, recently.
Is there a big age difference between your cats? Sounds like he is the younger of the two and wants to play a lot. Again all I can suggest is watch My Cat From Hell you will learn a lot.
Actually, Tonka is the more playful and he’s about… eight? Creamsicle is maybe two years old.
I could see that Creamsicle is in a playing mood. (She’s becoming much more comfortable, after we took her in.) I got her to play with ‘The Thing’ (feather wand), and it was very cute. Now the cats are chasing each other about.
Teaching a cat something is like running a 4 minute mile. Theoretically possible, but damn hard to do. When I had Siamese cats and tried to make a point, they would respond by crapping in the closet or something like that. I gave up, they won.
How long have you had Creamsicle? It sounds like she and Tonka are still working things out.
A couple of months.
Yeah, they’re still figuring out how to get along with each other. A couple of months isn’t a long time. I wouldn’t interfere too much - they need to figure this out for themselves. It sounds as if they like each other, so everything will probably settle down in a few more months.