Relative Something

After 4 months of what appeared to be a relatively equal feline partnership in our home back at the end of March, our two cats, Pequenita and Mozyr, entered into a mode of battling for position and control. At the time, I wrote a poem about the night the new conflict materialized. It surprised and frustrated us, bringing discord where there had previously been none. At the rescue organization from which we adopted them, they had been together in a room housing multiple cats, so we surmised they would already know each other. We brought home one female and one male, spayed and neutered. They are not biologically related, but we refer to them as siblings. They are “adopted” siblings.

Mozyr, the male, took a long time to warm up to us and his surroundings, finding solace as far under our bed as he could get. Pequenita was immediately friendly and craved as much petting and scratching attention as we could provide. There didn’t appear to be any conflict between them.

In a very short time, they were both curling up on the end of our bed, sleeping nights with us. Since Mozyr was almost always keeping himself at arm’s length, having him showing comfort in being next to us on the bed brought us a lot of satisfaction.

My limited experience living with cats left me clueless about the conflict that suddenly erupted. Both Cyndie and I wanted to intercede and bring things back to the way they were during the early months after they arrived here. We have since done some reading and learned that what they are demonstrating now is classic feline behavior. We are begrudgingly working toward accepting the odd hierarchy they seem to be establishing.

What bums us the most is that Pequenita has claimed our bedroom as her solitary turf. Mozyr is absolutely not welcome, and the majority of time he respects that, laying down on the rug outside the door.

Pequenita is smaller than him, but she has been the aggressor every time I have witnessed a conflict occur. Maybe it is because she is smaller than him. She controls the engagements, and takes it to him almost anywhere in the house, …until meal time.

We have two separate bowls for wet food, and they each dive in as soon as it is served. After a few gobbles, Mozyr will walk over to the other bowl, and take over eating where his sister started. She always backs off, appearing very timid, and walks over to finish eating in the bowl he just left. He shows her that he can eat whatever he wants, wherever he wants.

When dinner is over, she is back in charge. He will be totally innocent, snoozing on a chair beside us, and she will pounce up and swat him. He doesn’t fight back. He just takes off running, usually retreating under the dining table.

I keep hoping he will get fed up and bop her back one of these days, but he seems too much of a gentle cat for that. I feel sorry for him, and want to admonish her for being such a brute, but now we know better. They are cats. They’ll behave the way cats behave with each other.

We are just their servants. Our place is to observe and respect them.