I have one male and one female cat (littermates, spayed and neutred from a young age) who are almost 2 years old.
I live in a small 1 bed apartment where they have access to the bathroom, the hall, and the combined living room/kitchen. They have access to my bedroom only when I'm spending time in there cleaning or something but not sleeping and not when I'm not home as they love to pee on my feather duvet which takes ages to wash!
To compensate for space restrictions (they are indoor cats due to the safety of the area) I have multiple cat trees, lots of empty shelving for them to climb up and nap on, a large sun bathing sill in the bathroom, plenty of cat beds attached to all the radiators etcetera, and I make sure to excersize my boy 20 mins every night at least (my girl doesn't enjoy playful toys too much or for too long). They are both in good health and have 3 litter boxes spread over the 3 rooms they spend their time in. They are very nice sharing space with each other to eat and will not act food possessive because their bowls are right next to eachothers. They have one of those catmate water fountain things that they also don't mind sharing.
The issue is that they still fight at least once a day which results in them tumbling around the apartment and making horrible noises where I can't tell if one of them is genuinely hurting. I felt bad for my girl as she would be getting it the worse and would have the hide until my boy stopped stalking her and stopped grabbing her and hitting her neck, until I realised she was instigating it a lot of the time by swiping at him first just for walking by her!
For the longest time I stepped in and then I brought this up to my vet who said to try and let nature take course so that a dominant is sussed out. So I did. And the fighting is still daily and nothing has changed much. Again, if this is normal then that's fine. But if not, I want to know if I could be doing more.
I have never had cats before and I'm not sure if fighting this often is normal or if they will settle down. They have been like this for over a year. Sometimes they will sleep side by side but on very very rare occasions, otherwise they will stay far from each other if not to fight. I understand cats are mostly solitary however the situations around their birth were not ideal so I had to take them in. They have never caused serious damage and, as far as I'm aware, have never punctured skin.
Still, is this going to be a forever thing? Is this normal cat behaviour for them to just fight ever day?
Thanks :)
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/aoqsod/how_often_do_your_cats_fight_am_i_doing_enough_to/
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