I adopted my first cat, a 2 year old male cat June 2020, and he really was a very easy cat to have. Immediately social, loves to get picked up and lean on your shoulder, constantly licking and sitting in your lap. He had some spraying issues (like directly into my AC the first time he heard it turn on...) and humping soft blankets overstimulation, but that's because the shelter paused sterilization surgery for COVID. I had him neutered about a month after adopting him. The spraying stopped entirely, though the humping blankets has continued but without the aggressive overstimulation, it's just sorta funny to look at.
A few weeks ago I adopted another cat, a 7 month old female kitten. I got whatever advice that two cats are better than one, and my male cat was so social and also very high energy, surely he could spare some for a sibling?
Initially I thought the introduction was going smoothly, since the female cat is a rescued TNR semi-feral who liked the other cats in her colony and liked to see him through the pet gate in her separate room and flopped over in front of him before she flopped over in front of me. However, when trying to introduce them face to face, he just wants to dominate her. Now she does not trust him, her eyes are crazy dilated constantly.
I've mostly only been feeding the cats when they can see each other, and they can mostly ignore one another during mealtime and sometimes playtime, but the male cat finishes eating faster and tries to steal her food, so I usually have to put one of them in a different room halfway through her eating. I can very easily pick up my male cat, but the female is still touch skittish to picking up. So I try to site swap overnight with the male cat sleeping with me in the bedroom and the female cat having the run of the living room overnight.
Sometimes she will be peaceful on a heated cat bed, and if everything is fine he will walk up and lick her all over but she doesn't seem too pleased. If it's not fine, he'll smack her while she's just sitting, or if he catches her while she's standing up he will try to chase, and I've even caught a fight where he's trying to mount her. This usually happens when one of them slips past me when opening the door to the other room, so they are interacting by accident. She is basically avoiding him and running away as much as she can, leading to cornering herself where he can block off her exits. They had only one good evenly-matched playfight in the beginning, but it seems like that time is long gone now.
TL;DR, male cat bullying female kitten, what do I do? Feels like instead of rescuing two animal lives I've ruined the trust and socialization of the younger one and given the other a perfect prey instead of a new sibling.
[link] [comments]
from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/lhfwqf/older_male_cat_dominating_younger_female_cat/
No comments:
Post a Comment