[piratescotty]

I've read a couple of books on cat behaviour but I've never seen anything like this before.

We got two cats three years ago that were brother (Pingu) and sister (Paul [we named her before we knew her gender!]), they got on well and occasionally groomed each other. Before Christmas last year a stray male cat (Graham) started coming in through the cat flap, he was only about 6 months old. Then around New Year Pingu died . Me and my girlfriend were incredibly upset and so was Paul, she missed him very much.

Now Graham is a permanent fixture in our house and we love him dearly, and Paul has gotten used to him even though at first she didn't like him.

Now every now and then she will allogroom Graham. I thought this was a massive improvement, but then earlier today, she started licking him on his head and then stopped licking him and hit him on the head and hissed at him!

Anybody come across this before? I wonder what the reason could be that she felt she could be so loving one minute and then violent towards him the next.

 

[catloverami]

If Graham is an indoor/outdoor cat and is still coming and going out of the house through the cat flap, it's possible after she licked him she caught the scent of something he picked up outside....could be spray from another cat if he stuck his head in some grass or something like that. He could have rubbed his head to scent mark something and picked up another cat's scent on the edge of a doorway. Something upset her, and since cat's are affected more by scent than they are by sight I suspect it may be a reason for the bop on the head and hiss. On the other hand maybe she was getting back at him for something he did earlier that she didn't like....that happens too. It's typical cat behaviour even among cats that are good buddies, so I wouldn't worry about it.