One of our cats is a bully - urgent advice please!

[EleanorAbernathy]

We adopted two rescue cats last year, a kitten and an 18 month old. The kitten has fit in great, it's the older one that's causing the problem.

He's very boisterous, and picks on a couple of the other cats, one in particular who is our lovely sweet-natured laid back male cat. He also has a total personality clash with one of the feistier female cats.

He's a huge cat - and he just doesn't CARE! He does get on with some of the other cats, it's just these two where there's a massive clash. Female cat hates him and will pick fights with him, and then he refuses to back down - then he like to hunt the male cat who doesn't want to fight at all.

It seems to be getting worse lately - we were hoping they would learn to tolerate each other but it's not happening. Bully Cat is due his final set of innoculations at the end of the month and we're going to see if letting him be an outdoor cat and having a bigger territory helps (they are all indoor cats at the moment).


We feel really bad for Bullied Cat - he's not happy at the moment, we make sure he has safe places to hide (at the moment Bully Cat has been banished upstairs to give him a break!)

The last resort is that we have to find a new home for Bully Cat - I really don't want to do this and would hate to see him back at the rescue. He can be a lovely cat - if you're not a cat yourself!! It's just not fair on Bullied Cat at the moment and we're getting to the end of tether stage....

Does anyone have any advice?

[EleanorAbernathy]

As a bit of background, we have 9 cats all together - the two he doesn't get on with are littermates, the others are not related and are of varying ages. We have numerous litter trays around the house and spread out the food so there's no competition there, and they have lots of tall scratch posts/cat towers and custom built cat shelves.

Bully cat is good friends with the kitten we got at the same time although they were in seperate pens at the cats home and didn't meet until they got here.

The kitten is highly sociable and is also good friends with Bullied Cat! Bullied cat's sister just doesn't really like cats at all- apart from Fat Cat - who is friends with Bully Cat.......).