I have an timid female 11-year old black longhair cat. She's very shy and never comes out when visitors are around and basically only likes me. My wife wanted a cat that would give attention, so a year ago we adopted one from a rescue league. Naturally, the cat we had hated the new bot kitten, but we thought things would eventually work out.

To our surprise, the kitten turned out to be a Maine Coon who grew quickly to her size and realized he could easily dominate his shy older step-sister. He's also extremely jealous. Whenever I show a little attention to her, he immediately attacks her. He has exiled her to the basement.

We love our Maine Coon, because he's so outgoing and loves people. But I feel bad for my old lady cat. She probably only has a few years left. She used to love laying upstairs in a sunny window. Are those days for her lost forever?

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

Answers

We have experience almost exactly the same situation. We have a 16- year old short-hair cat who weighs only 7 pounds, and our adopted kitten MC is 2 years old and is almost 17 pounds. We have had to separate them a good part of the time, and allow the younger MC to see us giving attention to the older cat and then we give attention to the MC. There's a good deal of coordination that must take place for the two cats to co-exist, but sometimes we have now found them sleeping on the same bed back to back...so it can't all be bad!

-- Anonymous, November 16, 1999

Same problem here as John, and I'd like to see more responses on this - maybe we should start a new topic title. Our 15 yr old, 8lb yellow tabby defends her little territory loudly, but she's frail. We've had the twin MC mixes for over a year, and we've tried praise, combined treats & feeding & petting & sleeping, to no avail. Twin females (Sokie and Circe, age 2)won't leave her alone. The girls were bottle-fed humane society babies (from 2 weeks on) who came to us at 9 months. Circe was devoted to the woman who took care of them, riding around on her shoulder, and she lacks the rougher aspects of mothering, apparently seeing herself as a favorite child. She's the most endearing & cute, so that everyone who visits furthers the thought. She and sister Sokie are inseparable. Poor elderly Topo is Circe's sworn prey. It also doesn't help that Topo sleeps with us, especially due to illness, and Circe's behavior prevents the girls from sleeping with us. Sokie is fairly neutral, and would get along fine if not for troublemaker Circe's example, which she sometimes follows.

We finally ended up keeping Topo in the large loft-bedroom, and the girls have the rest of the house. That means separate meals, boxes, attention time (for the most part - we still have them all together when we can watch them closely.) When together, all will be well for a while, with shared attention, but if Circe wants additional attention (sometimes after prolonged individual attention!), she suddenly attacks Topo. Sometimes she runs up the ladder to the loft and sits there waiting for me to come get her, paying no attention to Topo.

We've put her in timeout for this (about 10 minutes in a quiet room), to no avail. Scolded her, sprayed her with water. The only thing that has made any difference is treating her like a mother cat would - picking her up by the scruff (while supporting her bottom of course), carrying her a ways, making a hiss sound, and dropping her (gently, close to the ground). She seems to be subdued briefly and acts indifferent to Topo for a while, behaving in a normal, friendly fashion with us.

Topo could live another 5 years! We'd appreciate any comments and ideas.

Linda

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

Thanks for the responses to my original posting!

I wish I had good news. But our MC still torments our old lady. Now it's to the point where the older cat stopped using the litterbox because the MC was intimidating her while she was in it. Now I have them separated when we're gone, but I feel bad that my older cat gets stuck in the basement while the MC gets the run of the house and the sunlight. He's a lot of fun, but I'm starting to resent him. I miss my first cat sleeping with me.

I have an appointment with the vet early next month and hope to get help. My wife and I have started talking of getting rid of the MC, but we do love him.

Good luck with your cats. Don't you wish we could communicate with them and get them to learn compromise?

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000