Cat confined for the sake of another

Good luck, then. I can't quite see how you're going to do anything
else but confine one cat for the rest of it's life if you aren't
willing to let them work it out in a supervised, controlled
environment. Sometimes it does take many months before cats get their
issues sorted out. It may take longer now that the cats have been
seperated for so long and the resident cat has "won" by getting the
newcomer locked up all day everyday.

It's possible that the stray has such hostility problems that he can't
live with another cat, but your description of pouncing and screaming
and the fact that the cat gets along fine with the kitten doesn't
really indicate a hopelessly hostile cat to me.

I've seen introductions that take 6 months to a year to settle down
between adult cats. It is hard to go through, but I don't see much of
an alternative here. Just don't let both cats outdoors at the same
time until they can coexist in the house.

The cat who screams and runs away is the one who is menaced, not the stalker.

The confined cat is loved and nurtured. I sleep with him, feed him three times
a day, change his water and dry food dish, clean his litter box, let the young
one come in to visit. I don't hold his behavior against him. It's his nature,
not his choice.

He's a great cat with people, and he's devoted to me, even though I keep him
confined. During the two and a half months after I had him neutered, he
mostly stayed with me wherever I went, and would move from one side of the
room to another just to say close to me. But during that period of his freedom
he became more and more determined to keep the other male cats away, and he
drove them away from their usual places on the porch and in the yard, until
they were keeping their distance and I was taking their food out to them.

Then I confined him, and coincidentally or not, that day was the last I ever
saw of one of my males, who disappeared after he was fed the evening meal.

Yesterday I tried again to see if I could keep the former stray, whose name
is Thug, away from my black male, whose name is Willie. So I let him out,
and for a while everything was ok, except that Willie would not follow me
around the yard with Thug there. He just kept his distance.

After a while Thug started paying more attention to Willie, and would
start in his direction, but I would stop him, and distract him with
something or other. But this only worked for a while. Eventually Thug
became determined to get past me and approach Willie, and did so.
Willie started growling, as usual, and when Thug came withing 10 feet,
Willie ran off into a wooded area, with Thug chasing him. Willie got
away, and I managed to catch Thug and take him back to his room. But I
don't think he understands the reason why he was confined again.

A couple of hours later Willie reappeared, and seemed back to normal.
All that was a repeat of the way it is now, whenever I let Thug out,
which I've only done twice, and the way things were last summer.

Thug seems to react to Willie the way a bull, if one believes the stereotype,
reacts to seeing red. Usually last summer Willie would try to stand his
ground, but when Thug got too close he would scream and run away.

Thug is not an especially pretty cat. He has a handsome face, but he's
a grey and black tabby whose body is a bit small in relation to his head
size. Maybe that's because he wasn't able to find enough to eat while he
was growing up. I don't know his history. I'm not sure anyone else
would want him, but I would give him up, even though I'm attached to him,
if it would give him a better life.

Pictures of my cats, except Thug, are at

http://www.geocities.com/ricewww/crcats.html

I'll try to get a picture of Thug there later today.

Calvin Rice

The cat who screams and runs away is the one who is menaced, not the stalker.

The confined cat is loved and nurtured. I sleep with him, feed him three times
a day, change his water and dry food dish, clean his litter box, let the young
one come in to visit. I don't hold his behavior against him. It's his nature,
not his choice.

He's a great cat with people, and he's devoted to me, even though I keep him
confined. During the two and a half months after I had him neutered, he
mostly stayed with me wherever I went, and would move from one side of the
room to another just to say close to me. But during that period of his freedom
he became more and more determined to keep the other male cats away, and he
drove them away from their usual places on the porch and in the yard, until
they were keeping their distance and I was taking their food out to them.

Then I confined him, and coincidentally or not, that day was the last I ever
saw of one of my males, who disappeared after he was fed the evening meal.

Yesterday I tried again to see if I could keep the former stray, whose name
is Thug, away from my black male, whose name is Willie. So I let him out,
and for a while everything was ok, except that Willie would not follow me
around the yard with Thug there. He just kept his distance.

After a while Thug started paying more attention to Willie, and would
start in his direction, but I would stop him, and distract him with
something or other. But this only worked for a while. Eventually Thug
became determined to get past me and approach Willie, and did so.
Willie started growling, as usual, and when Thug came withing 10 feet,
Willie ran off into a wooded area, with Thug chasing him. Willie got
away, and I managed to catch Thug and take him back to his room. But I
don't think he understands the reason why he was confined again.

A couple of hours later Willie reappeared, and seemed back to normal.
All that was a repeat of the way it is now, whenever I let Thug out,
which I've only done twice, and the way things were last summer.

Thug seems to react to Willie the way a bull, if one believes the stereotype,
reacts to seeing red. Usually last summer Willie would try to stand his
ground, but when Thug got too close he would scream and run away.

Thug is not an especially pretty cat. He has a handsome face, but he's
a grey and black tabby whose body is a bit small in relation to his head
size. Maybe that's because he wasn't able to find enough to eat while he
was growing up. I don't know his history. I'm not sure anyone else
would want him, but I would give him up, even though I'm attached to him,
if it would give him a better life.

Pictures of my cats, except Thug, are at

http://www.geocities.com/ricewww/crcats.html

I'll try to get a picture of Thug there later today.

Calvin Rice

You talk about this as them beign exposed outside. Don't you ever try this
exposure INside? It would be much smarter to aclimate them inside. That way,
Thug will recognize instantly why he is sequestered again.

Karen

"Calvin Rice" wrote in message
m...
The cat who screams and runs away is the one who is menaced, not the
stalker.

The confined cat is loved and nurtured. I sleep with him, feed him three
times
a day, change his water and dry food dish, clean his litter box, let the
young
one come in to visit. I don't hold his behavior against him. It's his
nature,
not his choice.

He's a great cat with people, and he's devoted to me, even though I keep
him
confined. During the two and a half months after I had him neutered, he
mostly stayed with me wherever I went, and would move from one side of the
room to another just to say close to me. But during that period of his
freedom
he became more and more determined to keep the other male cats away, and
he
drove them away from their usual places on the porch and in the yard,
until
they were keeping their distance and I was taking their food out to them.

Then I confined him, and coincidentally or not, that day was the last I
ever
saw of one of my males, who disappeared after he was fed the evening meal.

Yesterday I tried again to see if I could keep the former stray, whose
name
is Thug, away from my black male, whose name is Willie. So I let him out,
and for a while everything was ok, except that Willie would not follow me
around the yard with Thug there. He just kept his distance.

After a while Thug started paying more attention to Willie, and would
start in his direction, but I would stop him, and distract him with
something or other. But this only worked for a while. Eventually Thug
became determined to get past me and approach Willie, and did so.
Willie started growling, as usual, and when Thug came withing 10 feet,
Willie ran off into a wooded area, with Thug chasing him. Willie got
away, and I managed to catch Thug and take him back to his room. But I
don't think he understands the reason why he was confined again.

A couple of hours later Willie reappeared, and seemed back to normal.
All that was a repeat of the way it is now, whenever I let Thug out,
which I've only done twice, and the way things were last summer.

Thug seems to react to Willie the way a bull, if one believes the
stereotype,
reacts to seeing red. Usually last summer Willie would try to stand his
ground, but when Thug got too close he would scream and run away.

Thug is not an especially pretty cat. He has a handsome face, but he's
a grey and black tabby whose body is a bit small in relation to his head
size. Maybe that's because he wasn't able to find enough to eat while he
was growing up. I don't know his history. I'm not sure anyone else
would want him, but I would give him up, even though I'm attached to him,
if it would give him a better life.

Pictures of my cats, except Thug, are at

http://www.geocities.com/ricewww/crcats.html

I'll try to get a picture of Thug there later today.

Calvin Rice

You talk about this as them beign exposed outside. Don't you ever try this
exposure INside? It would be much smarter to aclimate them inside. That way,
Thug will recognize instantly why he is sequestered again.

Karen

"Calvin Rice" wrote in message
m...
The cat who screams and runs away is the one who is menaced, not the
stalker.

The confined cat is loved and nurtured. I sleep with him, feed him three
times
a day, change his water and dry food dish, clean his litter box, let the
young
one come in to visit. I don't hold his behavior against him. It's his
nature,
not his choice.

He's a great cat with people, and he's devoted to me, even though I keep
him
confined. During the two and a half months after I had him neutered, he
mostly stayed with me wherever I went, and would move from one side of the
room to another just to say close to me. But during that period of his
freedom
he became more and more determined to keep the other male cats away, and
he
drove them away from their usual places on the porch and in the yard,
until
they were keeping their distance and I was taking their food out to them.

Then I confined him, and coincidentally or not, that day was the last I
ever
saw of one of my males, who disappeared after he was fed the evening meal.

Yesterday I tried again to see if I could keep the former stray, whose
name
is Thug, away from my black male, whose name is Willie. So I let him out,
and for a while everything was ok, except that Willie would not follow me
around the yard with Thug there. He just kept his distance.

After a while Thug started paying more attention to Willie, and would
start in his direction, but I would stop him, and distract him with
something or other. But this only worked for a while. Eventually Thug
became determined to get past me and approach Willie, and did so.
Willie started growling, as usual, and when Thug came withing 10 feet,
Willie ran off into a wooded area, with Thug chasing him. Willie got
away, and I managed to catch Thug and take him back to his room. But I
don't think he understands the reason why he was confined again.

A couple of hours later Willie reappeared, and seemed back to normal.
All that was a repeat of the way it is now, whenever I let Thug out,
which I've only done twice, and the way things were last summer.

Thug seems to react to Willie the way a bull, if one believes the
stereotype,
reacts to seeing red. Usually last summer Willie would try to stand his
ground, but when Thug got too close he would scream and run away.

Thug is not an especially pretty cat. He has a handsome face, but he's
a grey and black tabby whose body is a bit small in relation to his head
size. Maybe that's because he wasn't able to find enough to eat while he
was growing up. I don't know his history. I'm not sure anyone else
would want him, but I would give him up, even though I'm attached to him,
if it would give him a better life.

Pictures of my cats, except Thug, are at

http://www.geocities.com/ricewww/crcats.html

I'll try to get a picture of Thug there later today.

Calvin Rice

Hiya Calvin -

Yes, I got that Willie was the one who was running away and screaming
:

If you can find an alternate home for Thug then yes that might be a
solution. I am however sanguine about the difficulties of re-homing
adult cats, especially "not particularly pretty ones". It's no small
task. I really didn't mean to imply that Thug was being mistreated. I
do think, however, that it's not ideal being confined and that it is
definitely hard on the human who has to chop themselves up in pieces
to attend to all the cats. And you wouldn't be writing if it wasn't a
problem, right?

Introducing unrelated adult cats is really hard. My two were
introduced as year and 3/4 females and it was six weeks before there
was a modicum of peace in the house and I had pretty much lost my
mind. I thought it was hopeless, but they are now reasonably
companionable and while they still wrestle and bash each over the head
daily, it's *mostly* in fun. But yes, the first cat who has ended up
the dominant one terrorized the new cat for quite a while.

I did keep them seperated for chunks of time (like sleeping), but also
gave them increasing chunks of time together - ending it when the
fighting broke out and then trying again later. Why are you putting
them together outside instead of inside? Outside IME is the biggest
bone of contention. Can you try releasing them together inside - maybe
2 or 3 attached rooms with some safe hiding places?
Then back to seperation again for a while. Do you think they'll really
hurt one another? If you give Willie an escape hatch, he should be
able to get away when he has to. Don't do it every day, just
periodically a few times a week and keep everything else normal. You
may find that they will eventually stop the pattern
in that space only and work out what is permissable. You have to
realize that they can't talk and that they are defining boundaries for
each other by attacking. If over a period of time, they can work out
brief periods of co-existence in the same area of your house, then
there is hope. Just don't rush the outside stuff. Let Willie have
outside as his kingdom for now and see if he can share the inside with
Thug from time to time. (You can install a magentized cat door to keep
Thug inside, if necessary). Getting him free range inside the house
would make things alot easier on everybody. And if relative peace
reigns for a long time, then you can slowly work on the outside
problem. Male cats in nature *don't* share their territories with
other adult male cats, so Thug is just trying to chase off the
reigning king so he can rule the roost. You're the one who has to
convince them that they're both staying so they might as well get used
to it.

Give Willie lots and lots of extra attention after the sessions are
over and tell him that he'll always be your cat. And ignore Thug right
afterwards so he
can see that you're not going to favor him over Willie. Try feeding
them in the same area of the house with really yummy stuff. If they'll
chow down on canned tuna within eyesight of each other - then you're
halfway there.

Figure the timeline is 6 more months and then evaluate where you are.
If you can't get the inside detente in that period of time, then you
probably never will. But I think you'll see a lot of progress and
they'll have enough of an understanding between them to make mutual
outdoor access possible at that point.

Sure, it's a long time. But getting cats to overcome their instinctual
behavior is not a quick-snap process. Keeping them permanently
seperated is giving them hope that they won't have to live together
after all. No cat likes change and this sort of change is always going
to strike them as an unmitigated bad and unnatural thing. It's only
through repeated exposure to each other that they can learn that it
isn't the end of the world as they know it.I just don't know of anyway
past it except "through".

Hiya Calvin -

Yes, I got that Willie was the one who was running away and screaming
:

If you can find an alternate home for Thug then yes that might be a
solution. I am however sanguine about the difficulties of re-homing
adult cats, especially "not particularly pretty ones". It's no small
task. I really didn't mean to imply that Thug was being mistreated. I
do think, however, that it's not ideal being confined and that it is
definitely hard on the human who has to chop themselves up in pieces
to attend to all the cats. And you wouldn't be writing if it wasn't a
problem, right?

Introducing unrelated adult cats is really hard. My two were
introduced as year and 3/4 females and it was six weeks before there
was a modicum of peace in the house and I had pretty much lost my
mind. I thought it was hopeless, but they are now reasonably
companionable and while they still wrestle and bash each over the head
daily, it's *mostly* in fun. But yes, the first cat who has ended up
the dominant one terrorized the new cat for quite a while.

I did keep them seperated for chunks of time (like sleeping), but also
gave them increasing chunks of time together - ending it when the
fighting broke out and then trying again later. Why are you putting
them together outside instead of inside? Outside IME is the biggest
bone of contention. Can you try releasing them together inside - maybe
2 or 3 attached rooms with some safe hiding places?
Then back to seperation again for a while. Do you think they'll really
hurt one another? If you give Willie an escape hatch, he should be
able to get away when he has to. Don't do it every day, just
periodically a few times a week and keep everything else normal. You
may find that they will eventually stop the pattern
in that space only and work out what is permissable. You have to
realize that they can't talk and that they are defining boundaries for
each other by attacking. If over a period of time, they can work out
brief periods of co-existence in the same area of your house, then
there is hope. Just don't rush the outside stuff. Let Willie have
outside as his kingdom for now and see if he can share the inside with
Thug from time to time. (You can install a magentized cat door to keep
Thug inside, if necessary). Getting him free range inside the house
would make things alot easier on everybody. And if relative peace
reigns for a long time, then you can slowly work on the outside
problem. Male cats in nature *don't* share their territories with
other adult male cats, so Thug is just trying to chase off the
reigning king so he can rule the roost. You're the one who has to
convince them that they're both staying so they might as well get used
to it.

Give Willie lots and lots of extra attention after the sessions are
over and tell him that he'll always be your cat. And ignore Thug right
afterwards so he
can see that you're not going to favor him over Willie. Try feeding
them in the same area of the house with really yummy stuff. If they'll
chow down on canned tuna within eyesight of each other - then you're
halfway there.

Figure the timeline is 6 more months and then evaluate where you are.
If you can't get the inside detente in that period of time, then you
probably never will. But I think you'll see a lot of progress and
they'll have enough of an understanding between them to make mutual
outdoor access possible at that point.

Sure, it's a long time. But getting cats to overcome their instinctual
behavior is not a quick-snap process. Keeping them permanently
seperated is giving them hope that they won't have to live together
after all. No cat likes change and this sort of change is always going
to strike them as an unmitigated bad and unnatural thing. It's only
through repeated exposure to each other that they can learn that it
isn't the end of the world as they know it.I just don't know of anyway
past it except "through".

"Karen" wrote in message ...
You talk about this as them beign exposed outside. Don't you ever try this
exposure INside? It would be much smarter to aclimate them inside. That way,
Thug will recognize instantly why he is sequestered again.

I would have to confine Willie inside to expose them to each other inside,
otherwise he would simply run outside at first sight of Thug. Willie has
never been confined inside. He has always been free to go in and out as he
pleases. I don't let the cats in and out. They always have a way to go
in and out without having to ask.

Of course I could confine him, but it would be like a betrayal of his trust.

-cr

"Karen" wrote in message ...
You talk about this as them beign exposed outside. Don't you ever try this
exposure INside? It would be much smarter to aclimate them inside. That way,
Thug will recognize instantly why he is sequestered again.

I would have to confine Willie inside to expose them to each other inside,
otherwise he would simply run outside at first sight of Thug. Willie has
never been confined inside. He has always been free to go in and out as he
pleases. I don't let the cats in and out. They always have a way to go
in and out without having to ask.

Of course I could confine him, but it would be like a betrayal of his trust.

-cr

in article , Calvin Rice at
wrote on 4/12/04 7:22 PM:

"Karen" wrote in message
...
You talk about this as them beign exposed outside. Don't you ever try this
exposure INside? It would be much smarter to aclimate them inside. That way,
Thug will recognize instantly why he is sequestered again.

I would have to confine Willie inside to expose them to each other inside,
otherwise he would simply run outside at first sight of Thug. Willie has
never been confined inside. He has always been free to go in and out as he
pleases. I don't let the cats in and out. They always have a way to go
in and out without having to ask.

Of course I could confine him, but it would be like a betrayal of his trust.

-cr

I think it would be much harder to acclimate them in an uncontrolled
environment. YMMV.

karen