Neutered Male acting weird toward the girls...

[edieandediesmom]

I have 3 cats, they are all siblings.  Ive had Edie & Echo (sister & brother) for one year.  They are 14 months old.  I have had Mama for only a few weeks.  She is almost 9 months old (their sister from a younger litter).  Mama had kitten 9.5 weeks ago.  I fostered them, found them homes, then introduced her to my cats and they have all been living together for about a week.  They were all feral before I trapped them but the first 2 were trapped at 4 months and Mama at 7-8 months old so they have all adapted to domestic life super well and they are very cuddly.

They all get along great.  There was absolutely no negative behavior during introductions and they have been laying together and playing together all week.  It's like they were always best buds.  Edie & Echo were spayed & neutered at 5 months old and Mama was spayed a couple weeks ago (the vet advised that I spay her while we were there even though she was finishing nursing the babies).

Last night Echo, the male, jumped up on the cat tree where Mama was and started behaving weird.  He was kissing her, standing above her, biting her neck, etc. and she would meow back at him as if she didn't like it or it bothered her.  I video taped it for a minute because I wanted to be able to explain the behavior and also see what happened.  I will see if I can post the video here somehow.  After a minute, and she seemed bothered, I said to the boy, Echo "Echo, what are you doing??"  And he jumped off the cat tree and walked away like he knew he had done something wrong.

This morning I woke up to Edie, who has always lived with Echo with zero issues and zero strange behavior, hissing at him as he was doing the same sort of thing to her as he had done to Mama last night.  She was mad.  Edie pinned her ears back and kept batting his face.  He just ducked down as if he was being submissive and as son as I said his name again he ran over and jumped up and laid down with me in bed.  Again, it seemed like he knew he was doing something strange or bad.  Any ideas?  All these cats are fixed and they don't dislike each other.  His behavior does seem sexual to me, like he wants to mate this them, but I don't know why that would be happening with spayed and neutered cats......?

 

[edieandediesmom]

Here are the video clips.  I obviously miss the beginning of both interactions because I'm not expecting it.  

Echo & Mama:


Edie & Echo:

 

[momto3cats]

It may be a dominance thing. I have a young neutered male who used to do the same thing to my female. In his case he was apparently trying to annoy her enough so she would run away and he could take her sleeping spot! I used Feliway spray on the places where this was happening, and it stopped pretty quickly.

 

[edieandediesmom]

Thanks for the input.  Maybe that is the case, he did really like to have that spot on the cat tree before I brought Mama home.  The weird thing is, he used to be the more submissive cat.  Edie, the girl, would eat all her own food then go and push him out of the way so she could eat his too.  He always let her push him around.  It's funny to me that he would choose to be dominate now...but who knows!

 

[momto3cats]

Maybe he just wants "his" spot back. He might have to learn to share.

 

[edieandediesmom]

Hmmm. It's not his spot. He tried to play (or at least it seemed like play to me) with Edie, the female from his own litter who has lived with all along and she was so angry at him. He was trying to sort of hug around her neck, face to face (they play fight like this a lot and it always seems light spirited and fun) and play bite and she made an ugly meow sound like a cat in a fight, he backed up and she hissed at him and swatted. He walked away and laid down, he seemed defeated. I don't know if this is related to his behavior the other day, but they have never interacted like this I hope I haven't ruined the dynamic by taking in their little sister. They both individually get along perfectly fine with her. Sometimes they lick each other and they all hang out together. I'm confused