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Will cats ever team up against the toughest cat?

post #1 of 11
5/30/10 at 2:15am
Thread Starter 
Do cats have any psychological sort of thing where they sense that one cat is the strongest so they collude with the other cats to attack the strongest cat?
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post #2 of 11
5/30/10 at 5:46am
Generally if there's an alpha cat they respect that. If something happens to the alpha or if another cat wants to assert itself as alpha, sometimes the group will go after the old alpha. But it's not cats throwing over an old regime or anything.

In areas where there is an established group, cats will also work together to drive out any new interlopers.
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post #3 of 11
5/30/10 at 5:33pm
I have not seen cats team up to attack another cat, but I had a pair of brothers that would team up on mockingbirds. Fred would lay on the ground near the car tire, like he was sunning his belly and not paying attention. Mister would wait until the bird flew down to attack Fred's belly, and he would jump out from behind the tire and grab the bird. They caught several, all but one of them escaped, and the birds stopped attacking them. I hate that they got the bird, but poor old Fred got a nasty abscess right on the top of his head where it pecked him so hard.
So, back to the original point, (sorry, I'm rambling) cats can team up.
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post #4 of 11
5/31/10 at 9:02am
I've seen the three stooges roust strays from the yard. They even chased the 'resident' stray away; his owner is happy to have him home.
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post #5 of 11
5/31/10 at 9:36am
When I was a girl, our two cats would team up to chase dogs out of our yard. It was hilarious. There were two dogs on our street (from different homes) who were let to roam as they please, and they liked to trot through our yard (not together). Muff and Bear would have none of it and would work together as a team to stalk and chase the dogs out.

We loved watching them in action.
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post #6 of 11
5/31/10 at 11:25am
All 5 of mine team together if they say a cat outside........ they are all at the window, puffed tails, running from window to window, with the cat outside just walking across the yard. I think mine would be a group of bully cats if they lived outside.
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post #7 of 11
6/2/10 at 6:39pm
I've never seen this among cats already living together. Cats tend to handle the "pecking order" on their own individually from what I've seen.

However, they often do not hesitate to join in the fun together if there's an invader on the lawn. But even a lot of the time, my old cat Sam used to do most of the home defence back in those days when he was top cat in the neighbourhood. After he died, we suddenly started seeing a lot more cats roaming through our yard when before they had all kept away!
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post #8 of 11
6/2/10 at 8:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by merrytreecats View Post
I've never seen this among cats already living together.
If the group is stable enough, it doesn't happen. A kitten coming of age, loss of an alpha, or illness in the alpha can upset the balance.

I know there's a few on here that lost their long time alpha cats and had some chaos in the home for months after.
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post #9 of 11
6/3/10 at 4:44am
Quote:
Originally Posted by strange_wings View Post
If the group is stable enough, it doesn't happen. A kitten coming of age, loss of an alpha, or illness in the alpha can upset the balance.

I know there's a few on here that lost their long time alpha cats and had some chaos in the home for months after.
Ootay (rb 5/09) was Top Cat here and kept every one in line. I was very interested in seeing who would take over that position. Two females (ages 3 and 5) and a male (he was 10). The girls unanimously elected my Tolly boy. I was very surprised at first, but I guess I can see why, or perhaps it was easier to elect the Boy, who loves everyone, than fight it out among each other.

Now it is a year later and Tolly is indisputably Top Cat, the two younger girls defer to him in everything.
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post #10 of 11
6/3/10 at 7:37am
Quote:
Originally Posted by strange_wings View Post
If the group is stable enough, it doesn't happen. A kitten coming of age, loss of an alpha, or illness in the alpha can upset the balance.

I know there's a few on here that lost their long time alpha cats and had some chaos in the home for months after.
I agree. My 15 year old Stumpy has been alpha since he was 18 months old in spite of the fact that he's had an auto-immune disease most of his life. The only time that things got upset during that time was when his illness got seriously bad, and even then the other cats didn't attack him, they only got testy with each other (it's been 4 years since that happened and the remaining pecking order wasn't sorted out in my house then). I actually don't expect chaos when I lose Stumpy, as it is now clear that Spanky will step in immediately to fill that role. He already plays that role when Stumpy is ill but then immediately defers to Stumpy when he is feeling better.

The only time I've seen any of mine gang up on another cat is in my feral colony when a strange cat showed up.
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post #11 of 11
6/9/10 at 5:46am
We had two sisters - Maddie and Smoke -when I was young who used to team up on the nieghboor's big dog. he was actually a pretty placid dalmation/english sheepdog cross named Bill that would come over to our house because my stepmother would feed him treats. well our two cats really took offense to this even though he pretty much ignored them (sometimes he accidentily hit them with his tail while wagging it, which drove them nuts). One time however Maddie was on the front steps and when Bill came sauntering up expecting a treat she hissed and swatted at him and he actually snapped at her which was really unusual behavior for him. as soon as he snapped at Maddie, Smoke went flying out the open front door in defense of her sister and the cats then proceeded to chase Bill off the lawn, Maddie even got on top of his back at one point and got vaulted about four feet into the air. If i remember correctly Smoke continued to pusue him all the way off the property. Bill embarked on an undignified retreat through the woods back to his house.
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