We have an adult male cat, named Ponch. He’s about 3 years old. About 6 weeks ago, we got a kitten, also male, named Nekko (my teenager got to name it, because technically it’s her cat; the name means “cat” in Japanese, which she is studying). Nekko is now about 14 weeks old.
Ponch just really wants to be left alone. Nekko is not content at this. He wants to play. But when Ponch won’t play, Nekko attacks, and they end up, well, not fighting exactly (I’m pretty sure if it was real fighting one of them would have gotten hurt by now), but scuffling, wrestling, that sort of thing.
Ponch seems really annoyed by this, and Nekko is always the one who starts it. I keep waiting for them to reach some sort of mutual understanding, but so far, it doesn’t seem to be happening. Should I try to stop the scuffles when they start, or just leave them to work it out for themselves?
the cats will work it out. When we first got Maggie, Midnight was pissed (she’d had sole run of the house for a day first), and refused to go near the newcomer. They had separate litter boxes in separate rooms. But eventually they were playing and sleeping together.
When we got our new kitten a year ago, both Midnight and Lotta hated her, and only Clarence would play with her (Maggie, sadly, was long gone). Now Lotta is playing with her, and Midnight tolerates her.
Unless you are seeing blood I would leave them to work things out on their own. Nekko will either learn that Ponce doesn’t want to play or Ponce will decide to play - or some combination of the two. You can help by getting something like a laser pointer or other interactive toy and wearing Nekko out, so maybe he’ll be too “played out” to bother Ponce.
They may never become fast friends - I’ve had Magic for a year and Lt. Dax still hates him - but you may come in one day and find them curled up together snoozing on the sofa. There’s no way to predict.
And you know the rules - where are the kitty pics?
Right you are. I never should have tried to post a kitty thread with no kitty pics! Here ya go. Ponch does not like having his photo taken, but I did manage to get this one decent one of them mixing it up under the dining room table.
They look like they’re playing to me. My two kittens (cite), who are littermates who adore each others, sometimes engage in a little rassling and kicking.
Are you sure they’re really fighting? Is there any hissing, growling or yowling involved? Maybe Nekko is just successfully getting Ponch to play with him when they wrestle.
There is much hissing, raising of the hackles and yowling involved when they get into it. But I really can’t tell if it’s real fighting, or if it’s just like two brothers wrestling for kicks.
Thanks. I thought I might have been spelling it wrong!
I have a feeling that my 16-year-old daughter might disown me if I gave her “kitterz” away. :eek:
We have a male cat about 1.5 years old. He’s playful and affectionate. We’re about to get a young male kitten to give him some cat company (he seems lonely and needy), hope it works out.
When my roommate moved in, she brought her cat with her. I’d had my cat for a year at that time, and that was the entirety of my feline-related experience up until then. Boy, did they get into fights like nothing else. Never came to blood, but the newcomer, Amanda, is much tougher than my Bobby, and it was always his fur that we found on the floor. It took me a long time to stop interfering with their fighting, and about a month after I finally stopped, they found a rough truce. They’ve clearly staked out their own territories, and the occasion slapfight still breaks out, but they can now walk past each other without too much worry. Bobby can even intimidate Amanda once in a while now.
You’ll be able to tell. Our two males spend about 80% of their waking hours happily wrestling one another, but when we first brought the kitten of the pair into the house, there was nothing happy about it - it was a for real hissing, spitting, ass-whoopin’ until we broke it up. They’re thick-as-thieves best buddies now.
Awwww- I love white kitties! Is Nekko a Siamese mix? You can tell by what color his eyes shine when they reflect light- if they shine blue-green, he’s not, if they shine red, he is. My Luna is a Siamese mix, and has quite a bit of white on her.
Mr. Spock’s a pretty kitty, too, SnakesCatLady.
I don’t worry about the cats fighting unless there’s blood. If one of them really wanted to hurt the other, they could do it. In the three years we’ve had them, Katya has gotten a couple of scratches (I saw them later, as bald spots in her fur that eventually went away), but that’s it.
So, are you better off bringing home a kitten/cat of the same sex, or would one of the opposite sex be less of a threat? (I’m assuming all cats are, or will be, neutered.)
I’ve never noticed that it made a difference; right now I have three girls and five boys. However, I got one of my males, Magic, when the female cats in his second human’s house simply would not accept him and kept beating him up to the point of bloodshed. (His first human - Magic was a birthday gift from a friend of mine to her granddaughter. He’s a Cornish Rex and my friend drove from Phenix City AL to NC to get this kitten and paid over $1000 for him. Two weeks later her daughter in law decided the cat “talked too much” and threw him outside. My friend “repossessed” him, but her cats wouldn’t tolerate him so he came to live with me. Dax doesn’t like him, but it’s only hissing.)
Yes, he does talk. I also have a Siamese and he talks more than the Siamese does. He talks constantly.
Ditto. That’s looks like a pretty relaxed pose, relatively speaking. Cats play hard and a bit of hissing and complaining is reasonably normal. If they start that high caterwauling you hear outside when two cats are truly going at it and fluff up to the size of a beachball, then I’d be concerned. Monitor them, just because the little guy could get in over his head. But no blood, probably no foul.
[warning: disgustingly cute mental imagery ahead]Neko is the one that allowed my friend (who owns the mother) figure out who the father was. He’s the only one of the lot that looks Siamese. His mom’s a calico. When I first went to my friend’s house to see if there was a male kitten from the litter that I was not allergic to, they had just gotten flea baths; Neko looked almost exactly like Gollum, but exponentially cuter![/dcmi]
When we first got him, he was all white, but over the ensuing weeks, he’s gotten tan stripes on his towel, tan edging around his ears, and tan on the bridge of he adorable little nose.
Oh, yes, and on some level, he’s very self-aware, because he “grooms” other things that are white and fuzzy, like our bath mat and my bathrobe.
CUTE kitten! That one photo of Neko with his mouth half open practically begs for a LOLCATS caption.
I’ve had two experiences with introducing a male cat into a household with an established female. One has never really resolved to a truce (food bowl detente is about as far as they’ve gotten, and it’s been three years now). The other pair are thick as thieves, and it took about a day and a half for them to adjust to each other.
We’re planning on a couple cats when we settle into the condo. Is it better to get both at once? My thinking is that we can avoid the established cat vs. interloper thing that way.
