Trouble At The Cat House

So today I finally unloaded the last of the twelve kittens, via the usual practice of sitting outside the grocery store with a  “free kittens” sign. That being the case, the two sister “mommacats” no longer needed to be in my basement. So I opened the door, and out they zipped.

However, while they wanted to be outside, they clearly don’t want to be elsewhere, and promptly went back to lurking under the back deck. But since they, Mark and Fingers went indoors, it’s been something of a free-for-all with new cats coming around. When Mark went back outside two weeks or so ago, there weren’t any obvious signs of trouble between him and “Scruffy” and “Buttons,” two new male cats. However, now that there are a couple of female cats out there – apparently feline MILFs – this afternoon has been interesting.

First Buttons came around and seemed to sorta get along with the girls. They showed him what’s what, and since he’s pretty small (and I guess used to being dominated by older/bigger cats), he apparently fell in line. A little later, Buttons was gone and Scruffy was lurking on the deck. Scruffy shows evidence of recent combat. At first I thought he’d tangled with one of the moms, but new evidence came to light later.

That evidence came in the form of Mark making a visit. I was on the deck watching both Mark and Scruffy approaching the deck through the long grass from different directions; they didn’t see each other until they’d nearly gotten to the deck. At which time Scruffy went all Kztini on Mark, and kicked his ass. Mark has proven to be kind of a bullying dick before… but it looks like he’s met more than his match by way of Scruffy.

My yelling at ’em didn’t do diddly towards breaking up the fight (and I sure as Hel ain’t going to put myself between two fur coated razor blades on a mission). What *did* break up the fight was one of the sisters, who waded in like a trippin’ berserker, leaping off the deck and smacking the crap out of a clearly startled Scruffy. The sudden break in combat allowed Mark to run to the nearest  patch of tall grass, while Scruffy just sorta shrugged it off and got back on the deck as if all was right with the world. Mark sat there for a few minutes watching. Finally he decided to risk it again and come to the deck (as I was calling him with the promise of the one human word he knows… “food”), but the second he saw Scruffy turn and see him, he bolted out into the horse pasture, growling and bitching the whole time. Either some sort of agreement is going to be reached here (unlikely, what with the promise of the two sisters as an easy harem), or I suspect I may not see much more of Mark.

After the excitement was over, I fed the cats on the deck and got to pet Scruffy. He’ll let you pet him for about 4 seconds, then he’ll turn around and bite you… a bite somewhere between “warning nip” and “prepare to only be able to count to nine.” Still, I managed to get him by the scruff of the neck… something that was made extraordinarily difficult due to the fact that his neck is huge! He’s got the neck muscles of a freakin’ weightlifter. I’ve never seen a cat like that. As a result, he has almost no loose skin around the neck for scruff-grabbin’. Given his new aggressive tendencies, I didn’t make a big deal out of it, and let him go on his way.

Self-portrait in the eyes of a combat-cat

Until today, Scruffy has seemed not so much “aggressive” as “skittish.” He even seemed deferential to Buttons, a cat probably a third of his weight. But something changed today. Women.

Raedthinn has no idea how lucky he has it.