bad behavior

Hi, I'm new here but need some advice. I have a 3 yr. male
old Turkish Angora and a 1 yr. old female siamese tabby mix. Both fixed. The male is consistently harrassing the female to the point where she is hiding and is afraid to walk by him. He chases her around the house, he pounces on her and generally bothers her. She does not respond to him. She does not want to play. I think he is too rough. She is instead withdrawing. I am beginning to discipline him and tell him No when he does this. Help!

Hi Simba- let me move you to the Behavior forum where you will get the help you need.

Is he neutered? That would be the first question. When you say you are disciplining him- how are you disciplining him?

I've said this to one other person, so I don't know if it worked. You could try to start over. Seperate them and gradually let thyem back into each other's contact. You could try the blanket method, where you have one cat sleep on the blanket and then the other and keep switching it. You could try the vanilla extract method, put a few drops at the base of each cats tail and on the bottom of their chins. That way they will smell the same. It may take time, but since they are both fixed we know that that isn't the problem. Just give it time. When the male cat bothers the female, try squirting it with a planmt mister. That will surprise it and then redirect the the cat (give him something else to play with). Just get him to stop and then redirect the activity. This may work, but I haven't personally tried it. Tell me if it works.

Please don't squirt you cat for acting out. If you have to use a squirt bottle use it and aim it away from the cat and spray it at a diagonal across the room. The prey response will then be engaged and the cat will go over to where the water landed to find out what type of critter it missed. But please do not spray your cat directly.

MaryAnn, what's your opinion on hissing at the misbehaving kitty? Romeo had terrible table manners (i.e. was always hopping up trying to steal food off our our dinner plates!) when we got him, we hissed in his face when he did that and he learned within a few weeks not to do it.

Now Khepera, who's been with us for about 2 weeks, is showing signs of similar bad table manners. I am wondering if hissing at him is appropriate, regardless of how effective it is. I want to do the right thing and not cause any sort problems for the cats. I am especially concerned, as he had been in a bad abuse/neglect situation before we adopted him.

I didn't mean directly. I would have recomended something else, but most things are a noise, that would disipline both cats, instead of just one. To startle a cat, there are many different ways of doing it. A soda can with a few pennies in it makes an unpleasant noisefor cats. My cat doesn't like it is we shake a Lysol can. The point is, you just want to startle the cat enough in order to rediredt the behavior.

Thank You Thank you all so much for the great advice. I think I will try to redirect my male cat's behavior by making a noise and then give him some toy to play with. It seems to me he just wants to play really badly. But she is not in the mood. I'm not crazy about the spray bottle thing myself. He was moved about from person to person a lot as a kitten may have been abused.

If he had been abused, then I would stay away from something like that. You could do something as mild as a small bell to a squeeky toy. Anything to get his attention to redirect.