Stressful night- Mostly Simon and Sumner
Sept. 18, 2002
Last night was a bit stressful. My three males are around two years-old, the age of social maturity for cats and there have been tensions. I heard Simon make his scary, guttural moan from hell “urrrerrrrurrr” noise, the one that sounds unearthly that he uses when an intruder cat comes in the yard and he is all agitated, breathing heavy, smelling musky and ready to bust out and get the intruder. (None of the other males ever get that musky smell, likely because they were neutered before reaching sexual maturity.) Except I found him and Sumner in the laundry room sitting face to face about 6 inches apart. Simon was sitting very still and didn’t seem to be ready to attack, but that noise was a big warning. Sumner is really asking to get torn up. He has been swatting at Simon when Simon passes by, so likely did it again.
I called to them to be nice, and they dispersed, but then Simon took it out on Minerva (but not viciously), who made the mistake of running past Simon, which woke up hubby, which got him yelling at Simon and so on. (Galen always smartly runs behind the headboard of the bed with just his head sticking out to keep track of the action.) Little Jojo was just sitting around. I hope she didn’t get too stressed. Later on she was really letting the toy rat (not the mouse, but the big rat) really have it, so I guess she was ok, taking out the stress on the toy rat.
Simon went out in the pen, where he always goes when he gets yelled at, and made his loud “Ar ar ar” call into the night. Not sure what he was saying or who he was saying it too, but that it is a similar call to the one he makes when he is bringing us in some bugs, except he was just standing on the ledge, bugless. Maybe he was calling to everyone that he was sorry for the ruckus (probably not). Or calling out to the cat gods. He gets upset when his human daddy is upset with him.
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Me loving Simon |
I just love Simon so much. It’s hard for him being a somewhat worldly adult natural acting cat stuck with a bunch of forever, ignorant kittens in large bodies. The ones raised indoors from kittenhood just don’t get it. They are so different from a natural acting adult cats. They do not understand what all his sounds and body postures mean, and things that matter to him don’t really matter so much to them. I’m sure he gets all perplexed when we fuss at him for getting onto the other cats, since he knows he was giving them the correct warnings. He tries so hard to do what we tell him, as best he can understand, and he understands remarkably well. None of the others do, and they were raised with humans. I love all my cats, and Galen is my most precious cuddly baby Boo, but I secretly like more wild, feisty natural cats the best.
It wound up with me sitting out in the pen with Simon, to then be joined by all the other cats. I tried to shoo them from the pen, but they all wanted in with Simon and me. Why, after all the ruckus, I have no idea. Then later on Simon and Minerva touched noises, so I guess he didn’t rough her up much earlier to really bother her. I still never can decide when to intervene or not. If I didn’t disperse Sumner and Simon, Simon wouldn’t have jumped Minerva- probably not anyway, if he worked it out on Sumner. But then he might have really let Sumner have it, which would have been worse. Maybe since the other cats do act immature and more like kittens compared to Simon, he won’t ever treat them like he did Snookums. She was from the streets also, just too small to handle Simon. And she sure knew all the cuss words from the streets that my forever kittens don’t.
Simon and Sumner were touching noses today and Sumner didn’t smack him once, so maybe it’s all ok now.
How much to worry and when to stop!?!