Serious ? about male cats.

As most of you know Ive got two males, Hercules and Lil Man (formerly Bubba). Lil Man is Bubba son. The reason Im posting is because about 5 minutes ago I was downstairs acclimating Lil with Bruno our hound. I try and keep the kitten upstairs because he is small and I dont want Bruno to play to rough with him like he does Herky. Now while I was sitting petting lil man on a chair everything was fine. Bruno was with my daughters playing, herc was laying down. No problems. Until Bruno did his famous dive bomb move and jump on my lap. Lil just backed up and was fine until Herc jumped up growling hissing claws FLYING. Ive known for a while now that Herc is EXTREMLY protective of lil man. But my question<s> is does anyone else have experiance with this and when lil man gets older and is more able to play with the "big boys" is Herc going to calm down about this. Quite honestly my legs and arms are taking a beating from this! I was pretty shocked to see Herc going after Bruno like this. But Herc always makes it a point to be directly between bruno and lil man whenever they are around each other and if bruno gets too close or tries to sniff or lick lil man Herc goes into attack mode ears back growling like "get away from my baby" type stuff. Could Herc be having a little identity crisis and thinking like a mommy cat. I would really rather try and get all three animals to get along but until Herc calms down about the puppy being out around the kitten Im going to keep the cats upstairs. Im not going to neglect one animal in favor for the others. The cats get to sleep upstairs with us and get general run of the house. Bruno has a limited area to run around in and still needs as much attention as the cats want......ARGHHHH I really hope that Herc is just having an identity crisis till lil man gets older because those two are really attached to each other now and I just love my boys to death!!!!!

They will all calm down when everyone is neuterd and spayed. Until then you have tom cats that act like tom cats and will be more territorial - that's why its important to have them done as quick as you can.

Besides that, if one of them starts spraying you have another big problem on your hands!

BTW is the dog being neutered too? I hope so

Keno breaks up the cats squabbling and is allowed to do so. Actually the dog gets along better with both cats, then the cats do with each other

Bruno is not neutered because the breeder who is a very close friend of Davids wants to use him to breed another basset litter. He was the one that turned out to have the most red in him. And hes hoping to get a couple of red and white pups out of the next litter. This was something we had discussed long before we even picked Bruno out. Its was something he discussed with all the adopters of his last basset litter. I was extremely worried when I first posted this thread but after watching Hercules and his reactions and what would cause him to go after Bruno I think I figured out what it is. Herc has never sprayed or been a very territorial cat. Especially compared to my moms male cats. He is a mother hen, when I first got Little Man I thought there were going to some major problems being two males. However there havent been except for the few squabbles where Little Man would actually get too rough for Hercules. I really do think that Hercules realizes that Little Man is his son, and chooses to protect him as such. The only time Herc goes after Bruno is when Little puffs up and starts hissing. And that is really only when Bruno tries to lick him. Once Little puffs up is when Hercules starts looking in on Little to make sure everything is ok and then when Bruno comes back in for another sniff is when Herc strikes. When David got home off work today he witnessed what was going on and had a little talking to with Hercules. *Dave likes to think that the cats will listen better if he doesnt force them to stop the bad behavior and just talks to them to explain whats wrong* We seperated them for a bit with the cats upstairs and the dog downstairs and one of us with each set of animals. Then we lock Herc in the bathroom and kept Little in the bedroom with me and brought the pup up. We had a nice little sit down got everyone calmed after Little stopped hissing and puffin up like a rice crispy. Once Little was able to just explore Bruno without getting slobbered on like crazy and Bruno was constantly in his face they were both sleeping in peace on the bed. Finally after that we let Hercules out who bolted straight for the bedroom like his tail was on fire. Once he saw that noone was fighting he just kinda looked at us like what am I supposed to do now?...Everyone laid down took a nap and that was the end of that. Not Little still doesnt like it when Bruno tries to lick him but telling a dog not to lick something isnt going to happen. So he will just have to get used to the fact that we have a dog that likes to lick and drool....So far tonight we have only had Herc go after Bruno once and that was because Bruno flopped down right on top of Herc to sleep. So hopefully all in all I was just being an overly paranoid Meowmy....I just didnt want anything to happen to my babies...But thank you GoldenKitty45 for taking the time out to respond...