The cats had had one of their wild screeching and yowling cat fights during the night, which started probably in the living room but occurred primarily on the windowsill in our bedroom. Squeakles was in our bed because he'd been woken up multiple times by the light growling coming from the windowsill, which it turns out were the precursors to the cat fight. One of the times he woke up he turned over on his hands and knees and tried to climb up into bed with me and cried whenever I tried to turn him over and lie him back down (on his own mattress, on the floor next to our bed). So I took him into bed with us, figuring that if the growling continued he was just going to keep waking up if he was on the mattress by himself. So we were all three fast asleep when the cats came screaming into the room and attempted to fight to the death on our windowsill. Squeakles was terrifed and started yelling and crying instantly, I held him tight and tried to soothe him (and protect him in case the cats decided to run across the bed), while J stood up and tried to separate the cats with a pillow while yelling at them (it works, but also scares Squeakles even more). The fight ended quickly, but then it took Squeakles a long time to trust that the fight was over. He lay there quietly but keeping his eyes open (while J and I were falling back to sleep) and nervously looking to the windowsill to make sure it wasn't going to erupt in madness again. J locked Koji out of the bedroom, but unfortunately we have a folding slatted door and Koji spent the next hour or so trying his hardest to break down the door. He banged his paws on it or slipped them under the door and pulled over and over while the door banged back and forth. It was hardly conducive to sleep, but at least the cats were separated. (It's the only way to separate them that works. Another option would be to lock Koji in the bathroom, but then he would yowl from there and get even more agitated, which we worry would just make things worse.)
So this morning J and I woke up pretty grouchy.
I was ready to revisit the idea of giving Koji away, while J was devising plans for keeping the cats separated in our three room apartment. He suggested that we get a spray bottle and spritz Koji whenever he went over on that side of the bedroom, and that eventually he would learn that that side of the room is off limits.
I am skeptical that Koji could learn anything like boundaries (or even if he could, he wouldn't feel obliged to respect them and certainly not because of a few spritzes of water), so I grumpily accosted J about this plan, asking him how he was going to monitor Koji every minute of the day and night, spritzing him whenever he walked over into that side of the room. I suggested that we just keep the spray bottle by the bed and only use it when they fight. By that I meant, whenever the growling starts, but I didn't specify that so J cut me off asking snippily whether I thought he was some sort of ninja and would be able to intervene in a fight and only spray Koji but not Tako. So I raised my voice telling him that obviously I didn't mean that it would work while they were fighting, but I had meant he could spray them when the growling started. And oh by the way, would he just explain to me how in the world he was going to convince Koji not to enter one whole side of the bedroom? Was he going to stay home from work and sit there spraying him?!
At this point J suggested that we both calm down, that we were both grumpy because we hadn't slept well, but that we weren't accomplishing anything useful by griping at each other about how stupid the other person's plan was. And suddenly it all seemed pretty ridiculous and even funny.
A couple of hours after this conversation, the cats have returned to normal. They walk past each other without growling. And I fully expect to see them cuddled up together taking a nap on a bed later today.
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