Up and Down

The fight continues between Augie and Creamy.  Usually it seems that Creamy is being more pugnacious.  He loves to hang by the sliding glass door and snag at Augie when Augie is trying to come in.  Augie likes that spot too (I wasn't sure how much my fan above the cat door was helping so I disconnected it a few days ago, getting tired of the "Quiet" drone) but doesn't snag Creamy so much as just threaten by his presence being there, as if to say "this is what it's like."  Creamy has often been the one who comes in most defensively through the cat door, even if there's no cat there.  I wish Baboni made clear instead of frosted door flaps.

One time, after there had been something like a fight the night before, Augie kissed creamy as Creamy was coming in.

In the past few weeks, it seemed like Creamy was more on top, occupying both the kitchen and living room and apparently controlling access.  Anyway, Augie seemed to like to sleep in the heated cat house a lot, though usually coming to the master bedroom at least once a day.  

I'm going to be more energy efficient soon by not running the Bedroom audio power amplifier all the time.  I started doing that when Augie first became an indoor cat, and if I turned the amplifier off, he'd refuse to sleep in the bedroom.  So I've kept it on.  He obviously likes the warmth nearby.  But last week I added a spare K&H heated pad, underneath his blanket (just one layer of blanket on top of it) near the amplifier.  It took him several days to discover it.  But now he goes and sleeps right on top of the cat pad.  I'm going to start turning the amplifier off when not in use soon.  That will be a net savings of some 40 watts or so I think.

I plugged in the outdoor house in September or so to encourage the cats to use it.  Augie started using it right away, often staying there rather than crossing Creamy in the living room.  Or maybe he just likes to be outside more.  And Creamy, having only gotten his indoor privileges recently, has the opposite preference.

At night generally though they've both been outside after dinner around midnight or so.  It pays not to feed them earlier because they're the most company in the evening, but not after feeding.  Though Augie sometimes come back in after dinner to purr warmly on my feet while I'm on the kitchen table computer.  Or accompany me for my moment of going to sleep at night.  (I have no idea how long he sticks around after that, but back when he was exclusively indoors for awhile, he was there when I went to bed and mostly when I got up, but it was clear he'd been elsewhere, such as eating half of his dry food.)

Anyway this is background to a "fight" they had yesterday morning, one of the biggest they'd had in weeks (that I know of).  By the time I caught up with them, they were screaming in a mutual clawed embrace which lasted for a minute or so.

When I see the fight in that stage, I also think or wonder about "sex" though I have no other evidence of that.  They're both males of course, but I'd seen Augie more obviously "fucking" another "male" (neutering status unknown) cat named Shadow (poorly taken care of by neighbors, he died from Feline Leukemia at the age of 1 or so).  Augie himself is not neutered he is vasectomized so he still has male hormones, other cats might not.  But I doubt Shadow was neutered either.  Creamy was given the standard Feral Cat neutering and shot with clipped ear and all, though that doesn't seem to have lowered his pugnaciousness generally, he was always about the most pugnacious cat I've ever met which was probably why he was the cat at the sliding door quietly begging to be adopted--he'd fought all the other and bigger cats to earn that position in my "Club Med for Cats" estate.  This time though Augie and Creamy were were face to face in their hollering embrace.  "Missionary" position?

It seems (though as I've said, I still expect this to go back and forth, as it always has) that now Augie is the top cat again, and he freely goes in and out of the kitchen today.  He was in the kitchen with me this morning when I decided to serve breakfast.  I served him breakfast and Creamy wouldn't come in until I opened the sliding door to come in.  I even had to move Creamy's bowl even farther from Augie's than I had been doing to get Creamy to come up to his food and eat normally.

This is pretty much the exact reverse of how things have been mostly since August or so.  Creamy has usually been the Cat in the kitchen, with Augie outside in the cat house (even if he had been sleeping in the master bedroom until just after I got up, he'd then quickly slip outside and go to the cat house sometime later rather than coming back in).

Before the fight it's possible that Augie had already figured out this was my monthly "Party Day" and the living room would be unavailable for either cat (I don't recall either walking by which usually happens).  This might have been motivation (he wanted better cat door access) or useful advance knowledge in starting the fight.