Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Things are slowly getting back to normal around here. I am feeling a little better each day. Yesterday I mentally blocked out the pain and did whatever I wanted to do for the day. Which turned out to be spending most of the afternoon in the studio working on a scrapbook of our vacation photos. As you know, we have five cats, and all of them with the exception of Hairy, follow me around the house no matter what I'm doing- even if I'm in the bathroom. Yesterday was no different, and the four younger cats were upstairs with me and all into everything. General will pick up and run off with anything that's not nailed down. He's been my trouble child lately (photo above). General is the youngest, and he is also the rowdiest and most energetic. His favorite activity is tearing throughout the house at fifty MPH for no apparent reason. He wrestles with Maarten, he seems joined at the hip to big brother Romeo. And he also terrorizes the two girls.

Hairy can handle him. I guess with age there is also wisdom, and at 17 she's not going to let some young whippersnapper get in her face. She will take her paw and smack the crap out of him, which usually sends him running. But Spider is different (photo below). I call her my "sensitive" girl, when it actuality she is mean as a snake and loves to bite me just for the heck of it. But when it comes to defending herself against one of the other cats, her strategy is to retreat. Which just gives way to an excited chase. Romeo is bad about picking on her. But the last few days General and Spider have been fighting like, well, cats and cats. Or, brother and sister. General has been harassing her from morning until night. Yesterday I even had to put him in time out, sticking him in a bedroom alone and closing the door. General will back her into a corner and not let her out, or chase her up onto a counter and sit there below her. Worse, he gets her down on her back and hovers over her. Spider growls, but does not defend herself.

Whenever I hear that familiar growl, I get up and break them apart, but General doesn't go very far and as soon as my back is turned, he is attacking Spider again. I tell her to beat the crap out of him and he will learn to leave her alone, but she doesn't listen to me. She is two years older, and probably 3-4 pounds heavier than he is, but she never fights back. Oh, she will sink her teeth into my arm when I am trying to hold her and pet her. But she lets her little brother terrorize her. I don't know why General has been going after her lately. Everyone in the house is spayed or neutered, so I don't think there is any "attraction" in that arena. And everyone is declawed, so at least there is no bloodshed involved. (Please, anti-declawing people, don't get upset, there is a good reason everyone is declawed. No I'm not cruel, yes I know the procedure is an amputation.)

I am starting to rethink my role as a cat mom, and stop getting involved. If I come to Spider's rescue every time, she will just come to expect it. If I let General beat her up a few times, then maybe she will get sick of it and start to defend herself. Last night she was trying to go to bed (in her cute little pink cat house that is right next to my side of our bed), and General chased her all the way into her bed. She swatted a few times, pathetically, but that wasn't enough to run him off. Instead I had to get up and put him out of the bedroom, and close the door on him, where he sat in the hallway for at least a half hour meowing crazily and banging on the door- while I was trying to read and relax peacefully before bedtime.

I guess I am going to let the two of them work things out from now on, and stop being so overprotective of my favorite cat, who I call "sister". Maybe if she shoves back, General will start leaving her alone. You know, the old story of the class nerd who keeps taking the abuse but finally stands up and punches the school bully in the nose, and the bully runs away crying! These cats will just have to reenact that movie on their own, with no directing from mom.