Continued from “Encounter of Zoe and Hugo (the First Part)”…
After a month, there was a happening that I saw Zoe’s feeling at bottom.
One day Hugo went to the vet to take a neuter operation. He was supposed to spend a night there. When I came back home alone Zoe came up to me and started to fawn on me. She came onto the sofa, which she usually did not. She might have thought that Hugo left home forever. Since that day was the only day when she can have me all to herself, I decided to let her be fawn on me as much as she wanted.
On the next day, Hugo came back home. Zoe immediately found his signs. Her eyes lifted a lot and her face looked as if she said “You come back again!”
Ah, just as I suspected. She still had an emotional conflict deep in her mind. I was so disappointed and had a guilty feeling. Hugo is a part of the family, dispensable. I made up my mind to search out the best way for each of us to live in a happy life, I never gave up on it.
Here are what I decided:
Respect the cat’s rules.
Treat them equitable but treat Zoe first: serve meal to her first, call her name first, and give CIAO treats to her first.
Me and Dad kept helping them get closer by exchanging toys and smells, but at the same time watched over them without intervening too much between the quarreling two.
After a while, we started to take him to the bedroom to sleep with us. Zoe used to sleep with me at my pillow, but since then, Zoe started to sleep somewhere else. I was sad, but I decide to put up with it. It was Zoe’s decision. I accepted all decisions of hers.
For a few days, Zoe continued to jump down from the bed once Hugo comes to the bedroom. One day Hugo found that he took Zoe’s space. Then he started flurried and left from the bed immediately. The real feeling of me and Dad was that we want to sleep altogether on the bed, but we decided to put up with it and accept their own feelings. We tried everything so that each of us can make a right choice for oneself and accommodate the feeling.
Three years since then, we now have the days that Zoe and Hugo gets along very much, and the days that Hugo gets naughty chasing Zoe around. We also have the days that Zoe and Hugo spends time separately. Now Zoe does not only run away from the naughty Hugo but gives tit for tat. She became able to do it because their relationship is now much closer and known each other better. The fight of them now becomes a fun wrestling play, which is one of the major fun for Norwegian Forest Cats.
One day I found Hugo fawning on Zoe after getting through ear cleaning at the vet, which he does not like. Every time Zoe takes care of him by licking the ear, as if she is relieving his mind. Passing those days, Hugo now acknowledges Zoe’s superiority. They get into mischief together, keep comfortable distance when sleeping, and yield the turns to play with me and Dad. In this way they now make a perfect pair.
The funny thing is that they play tag in a very serious way. The one always chases the other around with full force, and the other makes a fierce look with the round big eyes. When changing the turn, the same thing happens vice versa. Me and Dad guess they get revenge on what they have got from each other the other day 😉
“The problem in having two cats in a home” has concluded in this way. The best solutions, as a result, are to keep the cat’s rules but not to intervene their troubles too much, and to protect the priority of the first cat but love them equally. It took time but we are now “a complete family” by overcoming the difficulties. I hope these two articles will help the people who are suffering the similar problems of having multiple cats.