Need help, encouragement and advice please!

[Traci]

Not to fret....when in doubt, just say "altered" .

Actually, we monitor the board frequently, and usually, no post goes unanswered longer than 12 hours.....sometimes folks are busy offline or honestly don't know how to advise. We really do strive to answer all questions in a timely manner.

[MA]

One thing I will caution you about. cats are very intuitive, and if you are stressed or scared about a situation they are involved in, they will sense it (your smell changes as well) and they will react (usually negatively) Take deep, calming breaths, don't think about what could happen, let the recovering cats recover first before putting them all together. Cats are very social animals and if two are fighting and they have been altered, the dispute can usually be resolved. As long as there is no bloodshed or fur flying, spitting and hissing is common in multiple cat households from time to time.

[wildorchid78]

Ma-
I had a feeling they could sense my stress. there's a lot of other things not going well in my life right now and like i said my cats always offered me comfort and now they're one of my stress factors. I didn't know much about how to handle aggression between cats so i took the wrong approach when the first incident happend. I didn't put the aggressor (Mitzi) in a room by herself instead I put the cat that was attacked away. Actually I put all the cats away and let her roam around the house. I was honestly very scared of her because she did bite my mom when she tried to break up the fight. She took out some of her aggression on the other male cat the first night but now she doesn't have a problem with him and cuddles up with him . he kind of smacked her a couple of times when she was screaming and attacking the other cat. I hope she doesn't turn on any of the other cats because then I really don't know what to do but i'm praying she won't especially since things are good between them.

Mitizi and mikki have started sniffing under the door at each other since yesterday though. Mikki doesn't really care when he smells mitzi but she seems to get a little spooked. when i let her out of confinement she looks around the whole apartment before getting comfortable. I think she's looking for Mikki, probably to attack him. Or she's scared that he might be around. Last time she had a go at him she just saw him and freaked. Actually that's what happend everytime, she'd see him and start screaming and attack. I have tried to classify her agression (territorial, fear, displaced) but it's hard to tell, at least for me it is.

I keep telling myself I have to have patience and try to put them in the room together when I can be calm. I am eager to see if they will start getting along but scared too. the screaming really causes anxiety in me. They make it difficult to sleep at night since I have to keep one in the room with me. I am sorry if I am rambling on. I feel that the people on this board can truly understand where i'm coming from.

[MA]

Anytime any one of my cats is upset (sick) (angry) or on edge, it affects the other one. I will give you a recent example (I have ten cats) One of my barn cats came in the other day and I could tell just by the way that he walked into the room that something was not right. He wasn't limping, he just looked *off.* It was feeding time and he bent down to eat and started growling immediately. I had 6 other cats in the room at the time and they all stopped what they were doing and several hissed, one moaned and one growled. No one was visibly hurt, but as cats in tune with each other, they were responding to the distress of another. I scooped Bailey up and he fought me which is not like him, so that further validated something was wrong. I checked him all over, and then i found it, at the base of his tail a small puncture wound. I took him to another room, drained the wound and applied medicine to it. It was a recent bite so it wasn't abcessing, but it was affecting him. When I went back to the kitchen several of the cats were fighting each other. I picked up a heavy blanket, and dropped them over the two who were fighting to stop the altercation. It took about an hour for everyone to calm down and had I been stressed or scared about what could have happened, it would have taken a lot longer.

It is highly possible that one of your cats caused pain when he leaped on the bed, plus you have the scare factor working. They will work it out in time- expect some spitting and hissing and what I call paw play. Your warning signs that it goes beyond just being upset into anger is narrowed eyes, flattened ears, tail tucked and head down. That is a full on I am going to attack you posture and it won't be pretty! If you have a wooden straight back kitchen chair, and the two cats are fighting (I mean locked together, rabbit kicking etc- you can carefully place the chair over the fighting cats without smashing any tails or paws and it breaks up a fight fairly easily keeping you out of tooth and claw range. A dark, thick blanket will also serve as a way to break up an ongoing battle.


Good luck!

[wildorchid78]

thanks for the info Ma. I really am learning a lot of things I didn't know. mitzi seems to be scared every time she comes out of her comfort room. strange since she is the one that's the attacker. but maybe that's why she's attacking out of fear. she does it so quick too though. i think tomorrow i'm going to let them see each other again. please pray it will go somewhat well! i'll post what happens. thanks so much for the help everyone! you've helped me soooooooo much.

[wildorchid78]

ok so for anyone that's been following my story here's today's update. I decided not to try and have kitties interact today. mostly because I myself am not calm enough (hectic day at work among other things) and I feel I might stress them out too much. the nights have gotten better though and everyone has been able to sleep because the cats know they have to stay in their respective places now. The girls are doing good as far as their surgeries go. I was so worried about resolving the aggression issue that I never realized that poor mitzi was still in pain. her attitude seems to be getting better though. she didn't seem as skiddish when I let her out of her room today and wasn't in hunting mode. she even scratched the leg of one of the wooden chairs, which she does when she's in a good mood. small things like that count because she hadn't done that since she was home. I wish I could say that we were all ready for this but we're not. I think that mitzi needs to see that the house is safe. She was away for 4 days and I don't think she trusted being in the house and was disoriented. Just a hunch on my part. I hope it's the right thing to do, to wait and won't make the problem more difficult to resolve. what do you guys think? i figure she'll feel more safe this way and maybe some of the anger might subside against mikki. Ok i'm rambling! oh and about the feliway, does it take time to take effect or do they smell it right away? I'm still waiting on it to come. ok that's all! thanks again for those who have answered me and will continue to help me. I wish you guys the best in life for taking the time out to help me.