We have three cats. All neutered/spayed. All indoor/outdoor with free use of a kitty door I installed in the window. The black one and the small one are my stepdaughter's cats. Mine is the yellow one (which also used to be my stepdaughter's cat... different story, but its my cat now). The yellow one was my only cat for so long she got used to being an 'only child' and is scared of other cats. The small one wants to play with the yellow one, but some harmless grumbling or hissing gets the point across to the small one that it isn't going to happen, and she moves along happily enough, mostly respecting the yellow one's space. The black one and the small one get along great- they play and cuddle and share the food bowl. Not sure if this is just because the small one is still basically a kitten (maybe a 'tween' in kitty years), or if they're actually friends. But the black one however has made it its point in life to harass and bully the yellow one. I suspect this is a sortof 'if you won't be my friend, then we will be mortal enemies' dynamic going on. The yellow one insists on just being left alone, and that's not acceptable with the black one. He hunts her all day long when they're outside and hides near the kitty door and/or food dish to attack her (not play attack, biting and screaming attack) whenever possible. Except for when they're inside with me. The black one knows I'll intervene if he attacks the yellow one, so when I'm around and the yellow one appears, he just lays all nonchalant, licking his paws or sprawling on his back or pretending to nap until I walk out of the room ...and then its time to attack the yellow one. The black one is smart. He actually listens to 'no', like when he's heading into the back room to find the yellow one and I calmly say 'no, leave her alone', he promptly does a 180 and sits down and starts innocently licking himself as if to pretend 'I wasn't going back there to attack the yellow one, I just needed to get to this particular spot for a quick bath'. Then he'll try again later. This has been the norm since early spring, when my stepdaughter moved back in and it was just warm enough outside that the yellow one could mostly live outside where she mostly prefers to be anyway and is relatively successful at evading the black one. But now its getting cold, and all of the cats want to be inside. Not sure what to do...
