Asssault or Battery, never Assault AND Battery

In American legal terms, assault and battery are two different things. "Assault" is threatening to attack, and "battery" is actually making contact. "Assault and battery" is bad, while just assault or just battery is less of a big deal. Artemis and Athena seem to have a similar breakdown of the concepts. They will each stalk and launch themselves at the other, in play, but when they launch they don't actually touch each other. It appears a bit anti-climactic to me, but they still enjoy it. They do physically play fight as well, chewing and pawing at each other, but that either happens when they are already curled up together and cleaning each other or when one casually walks over to the other and tries to start play fighting.

But neither Artemis nor Athena ever commit "Assault AND battery", even in play. Is that true of other cats, do you think?

Nope...definitely not; But then, I don't think mine have ever read any 'law' definitions!

My crew stalks, jumps, beats, and batters one another all the time...last night, we came home to a 3 cat furr ball, rolling around biting, nibbling, and 'clawing' each other...when they realized they were being watched they stopped, and looked at us like "what? we weren't doing anything! we were hugging...honest!"

Yeah...Right!!!

Assault and battery is not unusual in my place with trespassing strays as the victims.