My SO and I have two cats, one male and one female.
We’ve had the male for 2.5 years now and he’s about 5 years old. We got him from the shelter but we don’t know much about his prior history besides the fact that he was a stray then adopted but surrendered due to house training issues (urinating). He’s been a good cat for the most part. He loves attention and has to be near one of us at almost all times, be it on our laps or next to us on the couch. Oh, he also loves being pet especially his belly (and as cats go, he does decide he doesn’t want them anymore at some point).
However we’ve had multiple issues where he gets extremely aggressive and attacks us out of the blue breaking skin and blood. They’re very painful even though we keep his nails trimmed diligently. We actually hired a cat behaviorist who suggested that he might just be bored and looking to play, and unfortunately both of us work 9-5 so we only get to see them when we come home, and we don’t let them into the bedroom as I’m allergic to cats (I know, I know...).
Another suggestion we were given was to give him a friend, so we got a young female kitten about 7 months ago at around 11 weeks old, so she’s about 10 months old now I think. He wasn’t so happy with her introduction, and we did the whole have them separated for the first week procedure, and only let them interact under supervision for the first month. He’s been hissing at her ever since, and he still does. But it doesn’t seem like a “I want to hurt you” his, but more of a “I’m the boss here” hiss.
After 7 months I think they’re getting along better. They play together (I’ve noticed that they take turns being chased as well as being on backs), share the same space together, (but they never sleep together cuddled up or anything), sometimes groom each other, although very rare. What’s become a big problem is the extremely aggressive playing that happens multiple times a week. It’s mostly by our adult cat where he will bite our kitten very hard to the point it pulls her hair out, but we’ve never seen blood. She shows that she’s in pain by yelping very loudly and hissing and growling at him if he doesn’t let go.
We’ve had to intervene in this play/fight many times now and once that happens I always separate them by putting my adult cat in a separate room with a water bowl and litter box. However once I let him out they interact with each other like nothings happened and she doesn’t act like she’s afraid of him, nor him like he wants to hurt her.
Help me here, what can I do to minimize these extremely rough play/fights? Are they playing or fighting? Is she actually getting hurt or not? I’m very concerned for my kittens well being where this behavior will actually end up in harm.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/bliopk/my_adult_cat_plays_too_rough_with_my_kitten/
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