Why does he bite her that way?

OK, I'm sure that it has a lot to do with typical male dominance behavior, but Ferris keeps cracking me up when it comes to his interactions with Penny.

Penny will be standing or reclining in a spot, minding her own beeswax, when Ferris will walk up to her and bite her on her neck, and HOLD her there until she breaks free.

Sometimes, he will bite her, roll her over onto her back, and bite her throat - just holding her there under his jaw. He did this last night, and she grabbed ahold of his left ear with her paws, bit him, released, bit his ear again, released, then bit his ear again HARD, then kicked him off of her.

Ferris seems to think this is GREAT fun, and makes it a point to jump on her almost as much as Penny enjoys playing "ambush Ginger!"

He does not attempt to mount her, just tries to dominate her.

I've done some research into cat behavior, and other than intact males using this behavior in courtship/mating, can't really find anything on it with regard to playing, or simple cat relationship issues.

The other day, Penny was standing beside me on the couch enjoying some scritches, and Ferris jumped up next to her, and chomped down onto her neck - that's it, nothing else, and he was standing beside her. She looked SO annoyed!

Oh, and another thing that he does that I find SO strange: He cannot dominate Ginger AT ALL, she will not allow it. When Ginger is giving ME lovies, Ferris needs to sniff her bum. Almost every single time, he comes and jams his face up her butt, then makes that open-mouthed funny face.

He does not attempt to sniff her bum at any other time, ONLY when I am petting her. What is up with that??? Oh, and Ginger doesn't appreciate it, either. She'll scream at him and give him a nice bap on the head for his troubles.

Are all boy cats like this? Or do I have a very special little weirdo?

The particulars might be specific to you but I think it's probbly pretty natural/normal feline hierarchy interactions from what I've read.

Gotta luv the sniff the butt, make the "stinky" face routine though.. My Mau does that on a regular basis.

Tosh does this to Oreo ALL the time. Oreo takes it sometimes and then other times she lets him it. The biting on the neck is a dominance thing...also the way that the male cat gets on the female to mate.
Oh and Tosh does the "smell the butt then open mouth" thing as well. I have heard that the open mouth is the way they are trying to smell it better. EWWWWWW!!

I vaguely remember Timmy used to do that when we first adopted Cleo. He's grown out of it though now they're used to eachother. It never happened with Charlie and Jaz as Jaz was the dominant one

Stanley will do the butt sniffing only when Bella is interacting with us and he does do a good amount of dominance behavior, or at least he attempts to. She does give him a sound bop on the head when he does

She will hold him down and lick his head after she bops him

Felix does it to Sheba.

Interestingly, when our second cat came off of kitten food and switched to regular ol' cat food, he stopped sniffing our first cat's butt. He was really into that when he was eating a different food.

With the dominance, our first is a 3 y/o female and our second is a ~1 y/o male (both fixed) and it's our female who is the dominant one and she does quite a bit of neck holding while the male just sort of sleepily closes his eyes.

Good thing too because we were hoping to bring in a younger, submissive male to be her playmate - I'm glad it actually worked out that way.

"power grooming" is apparently a way to show dominance as well. Mutual grooming, from what I understand is an interactive friendly thing, but holding another one down and grooming them is related to dominance. If I'm remembering correctly, it's washing the submissive cats scent off of them and partially replacing it with their own. I might be misremembering that part, though.

That's interesting. Though I have the three cats, none of them groom the others at all. I almost expected Penny to try to groom Ferris, as she has been a momcat and therefore has nurturing qualities, but so far, she just likes to wrestle with him.

I'm glad to know that this isn't unique to Ferris. I had suspected dominance behavior, as Ferris is 2nd in command, and I guess that's his way of keeping Penny at the bottom of the hierarchy, by being a bit of a bully.

The butt smelling, though, I still don't get what THAT'S all about.

I really get a kick out of his little "stinky face," though!

its interestng you say that about the "power grooming" as we're still in the middle of introducing our 7 mth old girl to our 11 week old girl and most of the time when they're together Merdle (the older) chases lola round and they roll around for a bit playfighting then lola escapes and merdle chases her and it all continues but sometimes Merdle will run in and start licking lola in her rear area until lola runs away and the fighting starts. I was thinking it was merdle trying to mother lola but i guess i was wrong?! is this play normal and will it die down so its not all the time does anyone know??

thanks