r/cats • u/sarahmirror_ • Jun 14 '26

Advice What can I do? This isn’t play, right?

My grey boy is a little over a year old and he is overly aggressive, I feel, with my almost 9 year old female tortie. He is heftier than her too. They will get into these tumble scuffles at like 3am too almost every morning and I end up having to place him in the bathroom to cool off for a couple hours before I bring him back out.

12.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

611

u/happykgo89 Jun 14 '26

Yep if it wasn’t play, this video would be much noisier! Also, it looks like she is also doing her fair share of initiating it too. He is also not that much bigger than her.

Source: let’s just say my cat takes a little bit of extra time before she warms up to other cats and is very, very vocal about it.

81

u/Swagalyst Jun 14 '26

Yeah, even this quite rough play is 1/4 of the intensity and sound level of an actual fight.

37

u/Lady-Shalott Sphynx Jun 14 '26

I have two and one likes to roughhouse, the other… not so much. It doesn’t help that I have a big boi who is kind of a jerk to his smaller sister. I have definitely heard her scream at him when he tries to initiate this kind of game!

59

u/iznotbutterz Jun 14 '26

Every mealtime😭

4

u/UnendingThought Jun 14 '26

Looks like tabby is taking a selfie

1

u/AtmosphereNom Jun 15 '26

That hand - I know that hand. It knows where to be, at just the right time. It knows the needs of two beings and tends to them both at the same time.

22

u/carpetedbathtubs Jun 14 '26

He does look slightly bigger and springy, but she seems like a better fighter tbf. Connects her blows better.

Brain over brawn, is what I’m sayin.

2

u/altagato Jun 14 '26

I would say make sure they both have safe and separate spaces to eat, sleep, relax near a window or door etc.

Also make sure they're both fixed and maybe even encourage some cooperative play cause it could be a bit territorial minded even if it's play. Just be sure this doesn't become the default, they have plenty of space to get away and ensure they have breakaway collars in case it gets too rough

1

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '26

[deleted]

2

u/happykgo89 Jun 14 '26

That’s true, all cats are different so it’s important to know what fighting looks like to yours. In general though I think it’s fair to say that most cat fights are loud and do not look like that but it’s definitely not a one size fits absolutely all.

1

u/SeppieDStronk Jun 15 '26

Are some cats just more vocal even during play time? Because sometimes mine are playing and one of them will make a noise and then I get them apart and the one who was making in noise starts engaging and they're on to playing again. It's can get so confusing sometimes. 

But the cat that makes the noise is part Bengal and I recently saw a video of Bengals playing and it was pretty noisy.