Cats: Feline Balancing Act
Negotiating household peace with nine cats is a feline balancing act. Until I began adopting the ferals, I never had feline territorial war problems. All my cats just got along. If you’ve been following along for the last couple of years, you know that hasn’t been the case.
First, we had trouble with Lady and Rossie. Then Daphne got in on the game, and sometimes Tarzan or Ajax played along. Since Rossie’s confidence has been growing (and since we keep her in the cage at night for her own protection and my husband’s desire for uninterrupted sleeping hours), Lady has mostly backed off. Oh, she makes a half-hearted assault of Rossie’s rocking chair every now and then, but Rossie tells her to go away.
Lady chases Sapphire, and I think they’re playing. Sapphire runs, but I haven’t heard her complaining, and Sapphire doesn’t avoid Lady. Rossie and Sapphire get along well, sometimes grooming one another and sometimes sparring in a friendly manner. I’m encouraged to see Rossie sparring, playing, and generally acting like a cat with Sapphire.
We brought Sneaky into the house a little over a month ago, and we were surprised that Ajax was a problem. He regularly attacks Sneaky and has drawn blood.
We’ve found some protocols that maintain a mostly peaceful atmosphere. As has been the case for quite some time now, Rossie and Sapphire spend the night in a large dog crate — about the size of the area they usually have when they board with Dr. Val. During the day, Rossie and Sapphire must submit to petting before being allowed out of the cage to have the run of the kitchen and parlor. Usually, this is brief. Throughout the day, if Rossie in in her rocking chair, we can usually approach and pet her. She purrs for this. Sapphire will sometimes sniff fingers, or play with fingers, but she will not consent to handling.
I was concerned that after I have my knee replacement we might not be able to let Sapphire out, because she developed a habit of running under the filing cabinet and waiting for me to pull her out at night. I finally figured out to block access to the filing cabinet, and Sapphire began walking into the cage at bedtime. She does not like to be handled, so pulling her out from under the filing cabinet required gloves. Since she walks into the cage, I have a deal with her that I don’t insist on petting her at night. Maybe someday Sapphire will change her mind and allow us to handle her, but for now, this works. I want her out of the cage and able to interact with us as much as possible.
We’ve debated allowing Rossie the run of the house, but we’ve decided she’s comfortable with this arrangement. We can see her and interact with her, which we believe is important. We both think (based upon her behavior when she’s in San Antonio) that she would be right back under the dresser in the bedroom if given the choice, and that’s not good for her or us. In that scenario, she doesn’t get enough to eat or drink, and she doesn’t get to the litter box easily. This way, she has easy access to all those things.
Things have been a little different for Sneaky. When outside, she was always a confident cat. Inside, she began hiding from both Ajax and Daphne. Daphne fancies herself the Alpha Cat-in-Waiting, so she feels the need to remind Sneaky of that just like Ajax does. To give Sneaky some stress-free time, we set up a comfortable arrangement in the downstairs bathroom with litter box, food, water, and towels. She welcomes this at night and has been relaxed in the morning. Some mornings she isn’t in a hurry to come out, so she’s permitted to stay in her room. Sneaky didn’t get a lot of human attention outside, so, while she likes some attention, she doesn’t demand a significant amount. Sneaky is not restricted to the parlor or kitchen, but we’ve seen her upstairs only once. Typically, she’s more comfortable in the parlor. But she won’t go into the kitchen to eat or use the litter box, so that’s another reason why we put her in the bathroom at night — to allow her uninterrupted time to eat and take care of her personal requirements.
During the day, the other cats can come and go when we open the parlor door. Lady meows. Delta and Ajax rattle the door knob, and everyone else manages to come and go when they get out attention to let them in and out. We do have to make sure we get everyone tucked in for the night between 8-9 pm so Ruby can come downstairs and eat. She prefers to spend her days upstairs. While we have water and litter boxes upstairs, we don’t have food up there, so to make sure Ruby gets plenty of opportunity to eat, we have to have the door open for the night at a reasonable time.
It has required a feline balancing act to find what works for everyone, and we think we have a workable solution.
Your patience and love for these animals awes me! We have one cat, who lives in the garage at night. No idea where she is in the daytime. I worry that she is getting old, but she isn’t interested in the house. She’s not averse to being petted, though she’ll walk away after half a minute or so. She “talks” to us–and boy, does she let us know if her food and water dishes aren’t to her liking! Her fur is extremely thick, and she’s got a knot on her flank that’s going to require scissors to remove. Sometimes she gets hurt–probably by another cat, but with the woods behind us, there’s no real way of knowing for sure whose teeth marks those are.
What we do have is three dogs. Dogs are different from cats. No way could we have seven dogs in the house. Dogs don’t have a lot of “sit still” in them. They are busy, noisy, and tend to leave their toys all over the place. They don’t fight, though. When we added the third dog to a stable two-dog house, there was no fighting over who was alpha. The third dog took a “job” about halfway between the little dog–who communicates with humans–and the big dog, whose attention is devoted to squirrels. Sometimes the third dog will help the little dog tell us what they (all three of them) want, but other times, she helps Big Dog bark at the squirrels. Third Dog got injured last month–it looks as if she was stabbed, but of course we don’t know what really happened–and has spent the last six weeks trying to heal up. She has been coned and bootied and kept in her crate so as not to pull the stitches loose again. She is slowly returning to “active duty”–we were worried the social order of our “pack” would be upset, but they are all shifting around to return to the pre-injury corporate chart. Oh, golly. Look how much I’ve nattered on!
Dogs are a completely different dynamic. I miss ours, but now is certainly not the time to contemplate adding a dog to the mix.
You’re right about that.
Our dogs are pretty well cowed by the cat, who weighs maybe 10 or 11 pounds. She’s small and has a naturally short tail. Her only kitten that we know about is a virtual clone of her, except that he’s male.
Only the little dog will go anywhere near the cat, and that’s with a lot of watchfulness. The big dog, who weights over 80 pounds, will stop dead in his tracks and not go near the cat. The dog, though big now, was smaller than the cat when he first came here, and Cat wasted no time in showing the puppies who was boss around here. Middle-sized dog was pretty well grown when we found her, but she has absorbed the other dogs’ view of the cat. Or maybe the cat did something we don’t know about. We have no game cameras!
Animal societies are complex, but then, so are human ones. Otherwise, what would we write about?
Good luck with the raccoon-proof feeder system. 🙂