Expert: Kate Tilmouth - 1/20/2009

Question
hi Kate,
 my wife and i have four cats and three dogs that are spending their lives with us.we have one very old cat (17ish) and another off the street approx 6mo.?  both neutered now the younger one really likes to hunt down the oler cat.  REALLY hunt!!!  this young one plays pretty hardy with the other two cats ( fe.-8mo.  m- 2yr. ).  both spayed and neutered. why? and what can i do to help this?  my wife is getting ill over this because she loves them both so much.  we take in homeless cats when we can, so we are kept busy with it.  any help will be greatly appreciated.  thanks

Answer
Hi
well this is normal behaviour for a kitten. they are learning new skills and this sort of hunting behaviour is one of them. It really is up to your older cats to either play along with him or to put him in his place. This is the normal order of things and your older cats will not be upset by the behaviour they just have to decide how they are going to react to it.

for instance years ago i had a kitten that did this with another or our cats, now in that instance the older cat decided that they preferred to live along and went and lived with my neighbour a few doors down. Another one of my older cats would play back and soon the "attacks" stopped as the kitten got older.

tell your wife not to worry so much, this really is normal cat behaviour and although to us cat fights etc can look and sound terrible, most of it is bravado and show. After all it is not in the cats interest to really attack and risk getting injured if they are not in a life and death situation, as in the wild an injury could mean death.

As your kitten gets older he will stop this learning behaviour and calm down, also your older cats will not put up with too boisterous games if they don't want too and will tell him off. It is the only way they can learn this and we just can't get involved as they won't understand what is going on.

If you are really worried, put a bell around the kittens neck so the other cats can hear him coming and if the attack looks too boisterous make a loud sound like clapping your hands together. this usually stops them in their tracks.

best wishes kate
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