I'm attaching a video to show the interaction, hopefully it works. We recently got a kitten (named Ada) and after about a week and a half of site swapping and only interacting through gates she is out with one of our cats. The one she is out with is our older cat Khaleesi who is about 11 years old. Khaleesi just immediately seemed less stressed out by Ada and very nonplussed about the whole thing so that's why she's being allowed supervised time out with the kitten. She's interacted with the kitten for a few days on and off, but for whatever reason today something changed. I noticed when we let the kitten out that Khaleesi was following her everywhere, Ada wasn't really initiating contact but just doing her kitten thing playing. Khaleesi kept seeming like she was almost stalking Ada, hiding around corners to jump out and hiss/swat at the kitten whenever she would walk by. That sounds bad but I was noticing that Khaleesi was purposely missing, and not using claws. I was also noticing that after the initial spook and scare Ada didn't seem afraid of Khaleesi but rather curious / fascinated which didn't make sense if what was happening was actually aggression. Ada started following Khaleesi back, and slightly stalking her with the same outcome. In this video you can see they were both stalking each other, Khaleesi snuck up on Ada while she was distracted playing, but when Ada saw Khaleesi she crept over to interact. In the video I play the clip through at regular speed, then I slow down the hissing and swatting interaction 5x and then 10x because it really shows how Khaleesi wasn't really aiming to hit the kitten. She missed by a mile and this is a cat who can grab a toy at a midair with pinpoint precision. She also wasn't really using when I would consider to be aggressive body language, her ears were never pinned completely and her tail wasn't tucked. Same with Ada, while approaching Khaleesi she didn't seem aggressive or really scared. Obviously she was quite scared when Khaleesi jumped at her hissing but even after this video finished, Ada went to hide under a table for like 30 seconds before coming back out seeming 100% back to normal and not afraid. See then proceeded to seek out Khaleesi again! She is not pestering Khaleesi, she seems to understand that when Khaleesi is sleeping or laying down to leave her alone but if Khaleesi is out and about she does politely initiate interaction. I will also mention Khaleesi acted this exact same way with our previous kitten Zelda who is now 6, and unfortunately Zelda took it very differently and they still hate each other to this day. Zelda was petrified of Khaleesi as a little one due to this same stalking/hiss ambush without claws or biting behavior and holds a grudge even now despite us trying to reintroduce them many times.
So I guess my TL;DR is this: is this interaction play or is Khaleesi treating Ada like prey or being aggressive?
Video of interaction
So I guess my TL;DR is this: is this interaction play or is Khaleesi treating Ada like prey or being aggressive?
Video of interaction
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