Kitz Forum
Chat => Chit Chat => Topic started by: Weaver on January 25, 2018, 02:49:30 PM
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Little Somhairle growls viciously whenever he gets any food. It is so hilarious. I will have to make a recording of the evidence. I have never known anything like it. He had a small cube of cheese as a treat for using the litter tray instead of Mrs Weaver’s bed as a toilet, and snarled away like a tiny outboard motor.
Ate the cheese so fast, after a huge dinner, that he was then sick on the bathroom floor.
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See evidence at Youtube (https://youtu.be/pEi9PFdfKNk). Oisín is sharing the food bowl - never any problems with them sharing. Somhairle is making all the racket.
When Oisín tries to growl it is actually a strange sort of purr; it's as if he has never learnt the correct technique.
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I watched the YouTube video (https://youtu.be/pEi9PFdfKNk) but heard nothing out of the ordinary . . . :-\
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Apologies for the confusion, it was Somhairle doing all the growling. I haven't captured Oisín’s peculiar noise yet on camera. The sound in that video seems rather faint to me, I'll have to record a better example.
Somhairle just growls over cat food. There is a large toy butterfly hanging on an elastic string from the bathroom door. Whenever Somhairle ‘catches’ it, he growls as at cat food time, then tries to run off with the butterfly. Of course at some point, due to the magic power of the elastic, the butterfly comes back to life and escapes from his jaws and flies back to the door.
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Hmmm... there's a wee bit of sibling rivalry going on there.
I can quite clearly hear the nom nom nom growl which isn't actually that unusual. The beige cat is telling the other "mine mine mine go away". Some cats even do it with humans which in polite terms means "Bugger off & let me eat in peace".
Having just read your last post about toilet training, and now seeing this it appears to me that one of them is definitely trying to stake claim as boss cat.
This can then lead to boss cat peeing where he shouldn't to mark his territory, and/or the other cat not wanting to go where the other has been.
I think you may have to get separate feeding bowls and separate litter trays for them. At about 16wks they are like teenagers and start trying to assert dominance over other cats if they can get away with it. An older & bigger cat wouldnt stand for it, but with 2 of the same age and same sex, it looks like one is definitely getting territorial.
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They do have separate bowls and I never see any signs of dominance between them. `they get on extremely well and are very affectionate to one another. Oisín is the beige coloured fella in the clip. They do growl a lot, in fact I have Oisín a tiny piece of a croissant _when he was on his own_ and he growled like crazy when he was scoffing it. But there are extremely happy things and never show any aggression or any signs at all of one being slightly dominant over the other. Oisín was a bit braver than Somhairle in general. When Janet ticked Somhairle off for peeing in the dog bed he was miserable for most of the rest of the day, looked like his world had come to an end, and wouldn't even purr when cuddled.
They growl at the dog when he is walking past them which frightens the dog. Somhairle growled at the dog when the dog was on the bed because the dog yawned, and then the growling scared the dog off the bed altogether.
I wonder if the growling started when there were eight of them all comoeteing for food or for teats when they were tiny?
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I gave first Oisín then Somhairle another tiny piece of croissant each both did well, but Somhairle’s first growling performance was off the scale, superb. He chomps, nom nom nom, more chomping and then more growling - he has to pause the eating to do some growling or is it the other way round? But they don't take any notice of one another when they do it, they can be completely alone.
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Janet says that she is convinced the kittens are missing Caoimhe. They are very clingy with Janet, she reports.
Somhairle has worked out how to gain entrance to the cave. Caoimhe claws at me to pester me to make an igloo out of the duvet and put her underneath it on my lap. I assume that Somhairle learned the technique from her but Janet for some reason maintains that Somhairle learned it independently.
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I hope thats what it is :)
Just be alert for it though. I don't profess to be an expert, but it did look like there was some food dominance going on during that one clip as the 'nom nom growl' seemed quite distinct.
Had a kitten (Bubs) that did it for a while after he moved in, can't recall how long it lasted for I'll ask my daughter if she can remember, but I don't think it was for more than 6/8 weeks. He would also snatch food. I think it stopped as a combination of Chas put his foot [paw] down to assert Alpha cat status and Bubs realising that there was always sufficient food available to satisfy 3 hungry cats.
As I mentioned, they often grow out of it but they are trying to find their way in a relatively new household and establish pecking order. Janet will be in a far better position than me to judge what is going on.
There's an article here on it here (http://www.catster.com/lifestyle/how-to-identify-and-stop-food-aggression-in-cats)
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Duly noted, I will be on the alert for it.