Indigo and Theo, taken this morning. They cuddle, groom, sleep peacefully together and are genuinely fond of each other... the picture of cat harmony. And...
Ava, Sofia and Theo, taken last night, again all coexisting peacefully in the same space. They groom each other, cuddle up together, again having a close knit relationship.
So why do Sofia and Indigo hate each other so much???? It's baffling. Neither cat is simply an antisocial cat, (I could understand it if they were!) both have close relationships with at least one other cat in the household, they just don't like each other. At all.
Currently, I am maintaining two seperate households of cats, with Theo flitting between the two. At nighttime, Indigo is shut in the living room and Ava, Sofia and Theo have the run of the bedroom, long hallway, kitchen and bathroom. The morning sees the bedroom door shut, and Indigo (and Theo, usually) has the hall and bathroom and kitchen as well as the living room. The afternoon sees Ava and Sofia taking another turn, and the evening it's Indigo's time again. And so we go on. Both rooms have food, water and litter, cat furniture, soft spaces to sleep, high places to climb and plenty of toys, so even when restricted to the one room the cats have all that they need.
Re-integration of the cats takes a lot of hard work, here... and the smallest thing takes us back to the start again. Indigo going off to stud, for example. We were just starting to re-integrate, when Indie developed her allergy, and because of the concern over what it might be, I kept her seperate from the other cats. Well by the time the lab tests came back clear she was quite far along in her pregnancy anyway and it wasn't worth integrating them only to seperate again in a couple of weeks- it takes longer than that to do so anyway!
I'm starting to feel that it isn't worth 'forcing' the cats to integrate. It's a pain in the butt having to keep them seperate, but it's a good deal more peaceful, and the cats don't seem to mind. Moreover, Indigo has not had any incidences of inappropriate urination at all since keeping them seperate. I did forget to scoop her box one night (I scoop them twice a day, usually) and she did a big steaming turd on my nice clean washing, (sorry, potential cat owners... they do gross things occasionally!) but then she's always been finicky about not using a dirty box. My fault for forgetting to scoop. But the 'marking' has all but stopped since she 's had her own territory that her rival does not access.
So perhaps that's what's going to work for us- two seperate households, so that both my dominant, clashing girls have a space they can call their own. We'll see.
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