Cat Fights, Cat Flap, Aaargh

[NotQuiteCockney]

We have two cats, who don't get on very well. We've had both of them for 8 or 9 years now, and I know the source of the problem (our male cat wasn't properly socialised as a kitten), and mostly it's fine.

But for the last little while, we've been woken in the night pretty often by cats hissing etc. I think this has always just been our two fighting with each other. But I'm not 100% sure.

Last night I was woken by a cat fight. In our bedroom. The fight went down the stairs and then ended. There is quite a bit of fur on the landing. I found our male cat, and checked him over.

Ah, I've just now found my female, and she's fine.

So clearly our two are just hissing at each other, but some other cat came in last night and got into a fight with one of mine.

So. Is there anything I can do to get my cats to get along better?

And I've heard of cat flaps that only let cats in with a particular token on them or something? Do these work? How hard are they to install? The door is pretty solid, and I don't want to start cutting it more ...

The cat flaps you mean, should be the same size as a normal one. We had one years ago. Our cats used to wear a special magnet thing on their collar, which would only allow them in. That's the theory, but we hadn't counted on the large ginger Tom that would come and headbutt the flap really hard, let himself in and scoff all our cats food.

That's a shame about your cats not getting along, I can't really offer any suggestions unfortunately. I think cats are more difficult than dogs to resolove with matters like that.

just because you can see where the fur cam eoff doesn't mean it didn't come of one of them, trust me.

my 2 cats that i had when i was younger fought all the time and fur would fly but there would never be a mark on either one of them.

tbh, i'd do away with the cat flap altogether. if cat is out at night he stays out, if he's in he stays in... i wouldn't be that comfortable with all that trooping in and out..... probably stemming form my old cats habit of bringing the mice and birds she caught into the house still alive.... not a good thing to come down to in the morning!

Oh, I should have said. Both our cats are entirely black. There was white fur on the carpet, and on the male cat. So definately someone else's cat. Some of the fur on the floor was definately from our male cat, too, though. (I'll keep an eye on him for infections now. I could only find spit on him after the fight, not blood, but still ... cat wounds are such a hassle.)

I'd rather not get rid of the cat flap - they don't bring in 'gifts', and before we got the cat flap, they would tap on our bedroom dormer window to be let in, in the night.

Oh, and interesting to know those cat flap magnety things aren't reliable. We've been having cats spraying by the flap, too, I think. (Both ours are neutered.)

afaik a neautered cat can still spray.... not that that means it's them of course!

would they tolerate just being kept in at night?

I don't think they'd like that. They never have been kept in at night, not since we've been in this house.

difficult then... sounds like your best option mightbe to give one of those magnety things a try and hope that none of you neighbours cats are as clever as the tom mumypenguin had visiting her!

I've had this - in fact we were once woken up by the fight going on over the bed! Generally not much physical contact though, and you are right bites etc are a huge pain (we are fairly sure that's how one of our cats got the infection that killed him). We currently have six cat visitors at last count so I am also thinking about personalised cat flaps, but the jury seems to be definitely out as to whether they work or not. Luckily our cat is very ancient and none of the intruders seem to do anything other than eat his food (although one of them appears to have slept on the kitchen table and been sick - I'm pretty sure our cat can't get up that high).

We had to get one of those magenetic tag entry cat flaps to stop this exact problem. Obvioulsy it doesn't work if the other cat has a tagged collar to access their own flap

The magnetic collar things worked in my last flat where I came home one day and there were 5 cats in the house, only 2 of which lived there! My two are so pathetic they were just sitting there waiting for me to sort it out

Only downside was that they both now have a bald patch round their necks because those magnets are so heavy. But they don't seem to mind.

Ok, have worked out the actual problem, I think. My "competant" cat was locked in an unused part of the house (and shit on the leather sofa, yum!). So house defence was left to the rubbish cat, who fought, rather than just hissing, like a normal cat.

Thank god for leather sofas, it seems to have cleaned up ok. [nauseated]

Yes, neutered Toms can still spray. I sadly had to give two Toms to rescue because of this. They were neutered, but still sprayed really badly, and the whole house stank.

Is it toms who are neutered too late (e.g. post adolescence?) who spray? My male cat doesn't spray, anyway. And the other male cat I had since kittenhood, never sprayed.

(I did have a male cat who was ... affectionate? ... with arms. Kinda annoying, but since he was already neutered, there wasn't much we could do about it, other than notice when he was sidling up with that sort of look in his eye, and avoid him ...)

I had a magnetic cat flap at my old house. Didn't stop huge tom busting his way in and terrorising my Barty cat, who though is ginormous, is a big wuss and needs mummy to rescue him.