Brother and sister

I've posted a lot about the cats separately, but not much about how they interact.

The overall advice seems to be that having more than one cat is a Very Bad Idea (although I've noted that a lot of people who say this have several!). Cats are territorial (but social...) and don't like to share their space or their humans with other cats.

If you MUST get two cats, littermates are best, and the best combination is a brother and a sister cat. We win one point. Finally.

When we adopted them, the sanctuary said that Natalie was extremely shy and needed Nathan around to help her out a bit. Since they've settled in, she's come out of her shell twice the size. I'll illustrate this by saying that although we get them in at night, it's Nathan I worry about when he's a bit slow to come back. I know Natalie could beat up a badger no problems; Nathan, not so much.

Their interactions with each other are interesting. They do quite a lot of tearing around after each other, probably because they are both still young cats. At first, I worried that he bullied her, as he was always the one jumping on her. It felt like she couldn't go anywhere without being mounted. I really don't approve of siblings mounting each other, for the record.

Since then, I've seen her drop-kick him in the face, punch him on the nose with her back legs from lying down and kick him in the guts. She can handle herself.

They've recently starting fighting with hissing, where before it was purely playfighting with no verbalising. I don't know if the hissing is just play too, but it certainly sounds a bit nastier.

When we let them out in the morning they go off together, which is sweet, and they do some investigating together, as per the photo at the top. They are quite independent of each other generally though. Domestic cats are definitely more tiger than lion, and pack hunting doesn't come into the equation. When they're hunting bees, it's every cat for him/herself.

I hope they carry on getting on, and a little less fighting would be very pleasant, in the long term. It's noisy, above everything!

Here's a short photo story from today:



This looks cute, like they're bookends, right? In reality, it's like the game of chicken they play in Grease, and they're going to run at each other for a wrestle. You can see Nathan's baldy face patch clearly in this picture.



POW! Smackdown! Nathan on top of Natalie, looks like he's biting her shoulder. She's kicking him where he hasn't got any balls. It's quite dramatic in real life.



Then they walk away, like nothing happened. Nothing to see here.

As I type, they are chasing each other around the hall and living room. So peaceful.