Expert: Karen Craft - 10/25/2009

Question
I have four 10 week old kittens. They have never been outside before today. We put them all outside today so that we could clean up their room. The mother cat, whom has only been out for four days her entire life, was put outside as well. We couldn't find all of them, so we ran errands & when we came home a few hours later we were trying to round up all 5 cats to bring them back into the house. The mother cat was fighting with her kittens & now a couple of the kittens are fighting with one another. It's not the typical play fighting that they were doing while in the house. It's vicious fights that bring blood. Why did this start all of a sudden & how do we stop it? It's not feasible for us to keep all the cats separated from each other in different rooms. As of right now I have left the mother cat outside because she was fighting with a few of the kittens & they were bleeding. Please help me. I need any advice that you can give. I love my cat, as well as my mother cat. They are my babies. We had planned on keeping them all, but I don't know how to keep them all from fighting each other & I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I was selfish & did keep them all, knowing they were fighting so viciously & woke to find one of them hurt really really badly or dead. Please help me.

Answer
Hi Mandy,

It sounds like a case of misdirected aggression. The most likely case is that when they were outside they either saw or came into contact with other strange cats. Instead of getting pissed off at the strange cat they got mad at each other.

Get something called Feliway Comfort Zone. This mimics a cat's happy pheromones. This should help relax them. Don't keep the mom outside. You are just reinforcing her behavior. You might want to follow a cat intro protocol. Brush the kits and the mom with the same brush to co-mingle their scents. Feed them some special treats together. If you see one with aggressive behavior remove that one to reintroduce later.

All should be fine in a little while. It will just take time. Don't let them out again. And be careful when you take one the vet. You may have the same problems when you get back with that one from the vet. It picks up strange smells and they don't recognize it. Take them all to the vet to prevent this. Good luck.

Ciao, Karen