I really find animal behavior endlessly fascinating. For instance, you often see the boys cuddled up together as they are in this photo. That was almost all you saw when they were kittens.
Around the age of two, though, Simba decided he was much more interested in cuddling with humans than with Gizmo. Gizmo, unfortunately, has cuddling with big brother as his main aim in life. Simba no longer allowed it.
A couple of years later, around the age of four or so, Simba again began to cuddle with Gizmo — sometimes. Sometimes they cuddle for a while, then Simba will attack Gizmo (never anything worse than a few tufts of fur torn out or a scratch on the nose, but I keep a close eye on it). Other times, they’ll cuddle for hours.
Other times, Simba will go over to where Gizmo is curled up on his own bed and just stare at him. If Gizmo doesn’t respond, Simba attacks him. The truly baffling part of this, to me, is that Simba doesn’t even take over Gizmo’s bed after he’s run him off. He doesn’t want it (you almost never find him in this particular bed). Apparently he is just asserting his position as alpha cat (yes, I truly do believe there is such a thing as alpha cat).
And here is the truly bizarre bit (to my mind): Simba never tries to run the dogs off of their beds. In fact, the dogs have pretty much totally taken over what was once Simba’s favorite bed — and he lets them! Although just to shake things up, yesterday Simba did curl up in that bed for a while (but no dogs were harmed in the process).
I still can’t quite figure out why he is meaner to Gizmo than he is to the dogs. He certainly isn’t afraid of the dogs. The other day I was cutting up chunks for his food, and Chester was curled up in his bed in the kitchen. Simba came in & gave him several head butts. Then I think Chester may have tried to lick him, and he started bopping Chester. But he didn’t do the “I’m going to stare at you until you vacate this bed — or worse!” maneuver.
On a side note, Gizmo seems to be very appreciative of the dogs’ crates. Their crate pads are often on top of their crates (after they’ve been fed, for instance), and Gizmo seems to think that this makes a nifty cat perch.
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April 11th, 2007 at 10:19 am
I have four cats, Willow, Oscar, Oliver and Lucy in order of their place in the “pride”. Willow although she is the most dominant cat will allow Oscar to sleep on the same bed as her, even though they are not related. Oscar will not sleep with his brother Oliver and will often attack him and push him off the bed to take his place. Oliver and Lucy will tolerate each other when sleeping on the same bed. Oscar will also try and fail every time to push Willow off the bed. It seems to me that most of the trouble occurs between the two male cats even though they are the only two of our cats that are related.
April 13th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Interesting. I’ve had 2 girls (unrelated), and now 2 boys (related). My girls just tolerated one another. Cleo, I think, would have loved to play with Puss, but Puss wanted nothing to do with her.
The boys do still snuggle often . . . but not always. And I really just can’t figure out why Simba is so territorial with Giz, and lets the dogs get away with almost anything!