As many of you know, my sponsor cat, Flo, is quite a character. Well, she thoroughly enjoys 'invading' the space of the other two cats. From her point of view, she is not invading, but I have had to start closing my bedroom door as, when Grace wouldn't submit, Flo started bulling Grace. Can't have that. Not only did she wet my (our) bed twice due to the stress, but she became a cowering fearful cat again. (It's all right, she is happy again now and has plenty of time to race around the house after Flo gets shut in the office for the night.)

Well, Poppy turned the tables yesterday. After a few skirmishes between Poppy and Flo, with Flo challenging for dominance and then retreating up the stairs, things quietened down for a while. I was wading my way through my newsgroups backlog and this almighty wailing started up. This was coming from upstairs and I was downstairs, so I have no idea what the neighbours thought! Anyway, I chunter up there on my trusty stair lift to see what on earth was going on. Flo was sitting there in the office on the window sill yelling at Poppy who was just sitting there in the office getting her own back. Flo considers the office HER space. And it had been invaded! Flo was going ballistic. "Get out of my room, you #@(%^! $]*=&" and other such phrases. (She can swear up a storm in case you hadn't noticed.) And Poppy was just sitting there and waiting for Flo to make a move. Despite her size advantage, Flo is a real wimp, so Poppy was in no danger, but I remember hoping that Flo's heart is OK. She was really irate. But she doesn't see that when she is the one doing the encroaching, that she is on another cat's territory. And the look on her face was really something. Shame I didn't have the camera handy. There haven't been any dominance challenges today. I wonder why.........

Copyright © Andrea Fuller
November 1, 2001