Kitten Chronicles – Week 1 Edition
I still can’t get a good picture of the new kitten because every time I try to approach with a phone, he gets up to rub on me. Anyhow, I decided it was time for another kitty update!
I’m still rolling ideas for a name in my head. I’m thinking about “Puck” as in the character from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The kitten is certainly enough of a troublemaker!
Nope. Ended up going with Spriggan. As in FFXIV Spriggan:
I’m slowly introducing Sebastian and Spriggan for a few hours each night when I get home from work. Spriggan has been enjoying the use of the many toys around the house, and I got him a new collar (seen in above picture) along with a new scratching post and such.
I wish I could say that the introductions have gone completely without incident, but that’s not true. There’s not been a full-out cat fight of any sort, but Sebastian is serious about letting the kitten know who’s the alpha.
Sebastian’s a rather jealous and sensitive cat to begin with. Any little change can send him into a fit of crying. Last night was the worst I saw him. He spent a good half an hour to 45 minutes just complaining loudly about the unfairness of kitten’s existence in his house.
Through these fits, Sebastian psychically asserts his domination over Spriggan by scruffing the kitten’s neck and holding him down on the floor. This doesn’t hurt the kitten, but it does dominate over him.
This is a behavior I’m familiar with through caring for ferrets. Back when I owned several, I had a very alpha male that would go through this same domination ritual whenever I introduced a new ferret to the household. It took a few days for the pecking order to work out, but eventually it did. Afterwards, the ferrets were best friends.
I’d probably be freaking out if I hadn’t seen this happen before. But I know that as long as the kitten isn’t getting hurt, it does more harm than good to interfere too much.
However, last night, Sebastian was just being a whiny-butt in general and not letting up on things. So, eventually I scolded him and told him to stop his behavior. He vocally complained at me in response, as if I should see what all the wrongs of his world were, but eventually chilled out over time.
I did some reading about this domination behavior, and apparently while it can happen with cats, it’s pretty unlikely. Figures that I just have a weird cat.
Thankfully, Spriggan takes it in stride and usually just sits there in submission. If Sebastian does get too rough, I’ve seen the kitten take a swipe at him to let him know. Sebastian is a big scaredy cat in the end, and runs away.
With the weekend coming up, I can bring the two together for larger tracks of time as I still don’t want to leave them alone when I’m asleep or at work. I hope a few full days of dealing with one another will calm things down more.
Also, in a few weeks, Spriggan will be getting fixed. I don’t know if that’ll make a change in things, but it can’t hurt.