As I have blogged extensively on my non-Pomona blog, we got a cat about five weeks ago. We've been holding off on getting a cat for, oh, about 16 years now, due to schedules, travel plans, and landlord preferences, but now that we own our home, it was time. We named him Voiceover.
Our block of Lincoln Park is extremely catty. Just within two houses in any direction, there are 12 cats, all but one of them indoor-outdoor cats. And that's not even counting Wombat and the kittens (who still need homes, people!).
Needless to say, with that many cats, there will be some catfights. Voiceover has done a pretty good job of asserting his property rights over a piece of land that had been treated as communal property for so long, but he does have a nemesis, Wheezer (whom I called Condi, for her imperialist tendencies until I learned her name).
Wheezer wasn't interested in our porch when no cat lived here, but once it was claimed, she just HAD to make it hers. Consequently, there are several set-tos per day.
In one of them, about three weeks ago, Voiceover sustained a respectable puncture wound in the head, which got all abscessed and made his poor head swell up like a gourd. You can imagine the consequences: vet, surgery, plastic clown collar, indoor life, unhappy cat.
He's now all better and back on his normal rotation -- of egress and ingress, but also of tangling with Wheezer. I've taken to dashing outside and squirting them both whenever they fight, but does anyone have any other suggestions for pacifying Catlandia? Keeping Voiceover inside isn't really an option; he's not much fun when he's criminally insane.
1 comment:
Glue some flowers to the collar and draw some 'peace signs' on it. If your cat can stand the humiliation, it may just give it the upper hand---a little 'Bait and Switch'.
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