Big Trouble with my Cats

I have a majorly annoying problem with my cats right now; if anyone knows anything that could help I would love you forever.

See, I've had the two boys for two years now. Last summer I picked up a stray girl. Now the girl never did get along with the boys; she thinks she's queen of the world and they're the peasants. But after a few months they started to have an unwritten truce. She didn't bug them and they didn't bug her. All was well and perfect.

The problem is that for the past few weeks (since about the end of the holidays), there's been major chaos between two of them. One of the boys, Max, is a major MAJOR wuss, and the girl tortures him. She chases him whenever she gets the chance. No matter how often I douse her with water or crack her on the ass, she never learns the difference.

So Max is hiding in corners, under the bed, etc all the time, which right of the bat drives me mental. But that's not the big problem. The BIG problem is that he's so terrified to move about the house that he barely takes time to do the essentials. He grabs bits of food and water in, like, 10 second intervals when he gets a chance and - here's the one that's making me want to kill them all - rather than chance a trip to the litter box he simply P*SSES ALL OVER THE **** FLOOR.

Luckily we don't have any carpet, so the smell isn't TOO hard to get rid of, but it's pretty f*cking annoying to be mopping up cat p*ss every **** day.

I've tried everything I could think of, but the two cats just can't get along, I'm not really willing to get rid of either, and as long as the girl is being a vapid b*tch, Max will not take the chance of travelling to the litter box. I'm at an absolute loss. -_-

We sort of had the same problem although not to that extend... our two male cats (father and son) always got along great, then we brought in a third male (he was about six months old when my sister in law found him outside) and well they just never really hit it off. In our old appartment they were absolutely brutal to eachother. Our one older cat was fine with defending himself and will put the other one in it's place, but just like your Max our Coco is the biggest suck in the entire world and just get's terrified. When we moved it got a little better for a couple of weeks coz it was a new enviroment for them all. Now Joey (the stray) still goes after coco when he gets the chance but there is enough room for them to both live their life without being in eachothers face.

Do you live in an appartment? or in a house? Is there maybe a chance you could put up another litterbox? (that is usually recommanded anyway for three cats to have more than one litterbox, not that I have it...)

are they all fixed? (the girl as well? )

Try to give your Max lots of extra love and attention that's what we do with coco. If the girl really won't lay off, as much as it sucks you might really want to consider rehoming her with maybe someone that you know that would be willing to take her, so that you could still see her whenever you want to. I know that would be hard I dont think I would be able to do it but you also have to think of Max and his life shouldn't be miserable where he's scared all the time...

goodluck!

You might not want to hear it, but to be fair to all 3 cats, if you can't separate them permanently, I would recommend finding a new home for the female.

It's not only an issue of behavior, you are also inviting major health issues with the male cat, especially if you are feeding dry food and he can't drink enough water and is forced to do his business outside of the litterbox. Short term you risk bladder infection and long term anything from bladder crystals to a full-blown blockage, which is likely to end with the cat dead unless you recognize immediately what's going on and rush him to the vet - not likely if he's mostly in hiding due to being terrorized by another animal in the household.

Firstly. You need to stop dousing your cat with water and hitting it. This is making her fearful and afraid, and is most likely exacerbating her behaviour. It doesn't work on dogs, and it DEFINITELY won't work on a cat. You have already said no matter how many times you do it it doesn't work - clearly this should have woken you up to something by now. IT DOESN'T WORK. Stop doing it, or you will have more problems on your hands.

This is a dominance battle. They will sort it out amongst themselves. It sounds like it is coming to a head, though - and your punishment of your female cat whenever she goes for Max is making her hate him all the more - she of course associates him with your punishment, and will just terrorise him even more because of it. Every time she tries to establish her dominance, you punish her, and she takes it out on him. I wouldn't be surprised if your behaviour is the root cause of this problem, or is at least making sure it doesn't sort itself out.

Are your cats spayed? If not, I would highly recommend that you get that out of the way before anything further. This will make a massive difference to their behaviour - seriously, a massive difference.

Secondly, buy some Feliway plug-ins. They are magic and work wonders. They release a pharamone scent into the air that only cats can smell, the same one that they rub off when they head-butt or rub their cheeks along things. It is very relaxing for them and will help them settle down, and will definitely help with the spraying. It's expensive, but absolutely worth every penny.

You need to get something from your pet store or vet that will get rid of the smell of the urine. You might not be able to smell it after you've cleaned it up, but the cats surely will be able to and they will just keep on going back to the same spot over and over to pee there again.

Getting angry and abusive will frighten all of them and create tension - they're like dogs in that way and rely on scent and body language to work stuff out. Cats are gentle creatures most of the time, and only get aggressive when they are stressed.

An incredible wealth of information can be found at www.thecatsite.com.

My username there is KitEKats4Eva! if you need some pm advice - but go and have a browse around, you will likely find the help you need.

Good luck, and please stop terrorising your cat or it will continue to terrorise the others.

BTW - It's the girl you should be giving the extra love and attention to, not Max. That will make her feel like top cat and will likely help settle her down. If she sees you paying extra attention to Max she'll just pick on him even more. In that, they're like dogs too.