On Cat Trees and Picky Kittens

A mild musing on cat dynamics.

We got a couple of new cat trees for our four little buggers this past week. One of our females, Katsu, is afraid of the other female, Toner, because Toner tries to eat Katsu on a semi-regular basis. So, for the longest time, Katsu spent much of her day in a big cardboard cat tower.

Well, said cat tower is about seven years old now and is falling apart from being chewed on, peed on, pooped in, and vomited in. It’s not long for this world. Hence, the need for more cat trees.

We got a deal on a pair of them over the Black Friday weekend. One of them is over six feet tall, which we felt would be a good place for Katsu to spend her days — up and away from Toner.

Katsu did not agree.

We tried to introduce her to the tree, and she did not care for it, not one single bit. She ran away from it and did everything in her power to have nothing to do with it. This was a problem, since she kind of needed to like it so she could be up and away from Toner.

We did the introduction while Toner was locked away for the evening — she spends her nights in the guest room so she doesn’t attack Katsu in the night. So, after failing to get Katsu on the tower, we gave up and figured she’d either check it out that night or not.

She did not.

When we fed them the next morning, Katsu didn’t eat much and almost immediately went to hide somewhere she doesn’t normally go. We couldn’t find her at first, and when we did, the rest of the day was spent keeping Toner away from Katsu’s hiding spot.

This past week has been a bit of a joy while we keep Toner from going after Katsu, try to keep track of where Katsu has gone in the first place, and do what we can to get Katsu to even look at the new tree. It’s been challenging.

Last night, after Toner had gone to her room, Katsu finally, finally started exploring the tower a bit. She’s a bit unsure — the two boys and Toner have been all about the new thing, and so their smell is all over it. But, she spent a few minutes exploring parts of it anyway, which I feel is an absolute win.

That’s one of the joys of cat ownership: a change in the landscape can completely ruin the dynamic. This is especially true if you have cats that don’t get along. Any tenuous peace you had can be flushed down the toilet by simply adding a new thing.

We are going to do our best to ensure that Katsu can have a peaceful time while everyone gets used to the new cat trees. Honestly, it will be what it will be. Toner has been less aggressive in the past few months, and most of her attempts to interact with Katsu have been exploratory rather than attacking. They even managed to share a windowsill for a few minutes this past week.

So, as we carry on with our December, it will be absolutely joyous to help the cats get used to the new things that they’re allowed to climb on. Hopefully, they all start to enjoy their new perches.

Hopefully, they’ll be too busy doing that to attack the new Christmas tree that’s going up in a day or two. I’m not optimistic.

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