Agressive males

Behaviorial problems with two adult cats who have co-habited for six years. Increasingly agressive behavior.

We have two male cats, Timmy - 9 years old, and Alex - 6 years old. Both have been neutered. They are strictly indoors.

When we brought Alex home as a kitten, Timmy developed irritable bowel syndrome. He has always hissed and growled at Alex from the very beginning. Timmy would never strike out at Alex, just the hissing and growling and running away. Over the years Alex has become more and more agressive towards Timmy and now when Timmy hisses, growls and runs, Alex chases him down and corners him. Timmy has been hiding in the closet 24 hours a day for the past few weeks and only comes out to eat and use the litter box. We've tried Rescue Remedy (although we were told to mix it in with their water), and using a squirt bottle to try to stop this behavior. Nothing has worked. Last week we noticed a large lump on Timmy's back, and upon further checking found that he had a puncture wound that was infected. We took Timmy to the vet where they shaved, cleaned, drained and dressed the wound. They found that the wound was actually a bite from Alex having pounced on Timmy's back. Both of our boys are precious to us and we don't want to have to give one up. Help please!

Dan & Penny

What a sad story. It must be breaking your heart to see your kitty so terrified. Honestly, since the aggression has been going on for so long, I don't know whether you can break it, but it is worth a try. Please click on the link below. In it you will find three more links to threads which discuss this same problem. This is going to take a lot of patience and persistence, but it is possible that it will work.

You will see that you should confine one cat to a room for several weeks. My bet is that Timmy will be very happy to have Alex locked out of the room for a while. If you give him long enough, Timmy might regain some courage and Alex might "forget" that he likes to attack Timmy. Anyway, I wish you the best of luck. Again, this is going to take a good deal of persistence, but hopefully it will work.

http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/sho...&threadid=4280

By the way, who did you give the Rescue Remedy to?

I strongly agree with lotsofcats here.

My Asim and Isha, whom are brother and sister, living together for almost 3 years now, Asim's agression towards his sister has only gotten worse. But it appears manageable. He responds well to short periods of time out when he does something he shouldn't.
Isha will do the same, growl and run (she never hiss's, EVER). Asim will chase her down, corner her, and attack. He attacks her rather feircly when she's sleeping sometimes too.

Make sure if you see this, break it up, but don't get hurt doing it, and then give the agresser a nice time out. And don't give him any toys or food when you put him in time out. Just put him away and ignore him.

If you see them getting along, talk to them both in nice soft happy tones. Some cats tend to get more agressive when presented with cat nip, so keep that away from them when they are together.
But honestly. I say you need to keep these 2 guys seperated unless you can be monitoring their play time. That bite to the back is a very serious thing, that's no longer playing.
If you can, give one cat one half of the house, and the other the rest. Or start off confining Timmy to 1 or 2 rooms, while Alex regains his territory and becomes more confident.

See if you can come up with a spot where Alex can run to, where Timmy can't. Perhaps you should speak with your vet about other types of calming aids for Timmy, or even as far as behavioral medication for him. This is a problem that really needs to be eliminated asap.