Guys and Dolls

Anna had a little “encouraged” meeting with Grant, which only lasted a little time before she became to agitated to face him and so retired to the sofa seat.  That’s at least better than the window seat, and she didn’t hiss at him.

This time Rhea was second on the scene, and she finally tried a bit of a charge to find Anna but I caught her and generated a little hissing on all sides.

It has been interesting how uniform the reaction of the male cats have been to Anna and her issues.  There have been four so far, with actually quite diverse personalities.  Davout is quite fearful in many ways, Harrison and now Sherman seem to fear nothing, Grant seems of only be wary of me.  Yet all of them are driven to come and follow me into Anna’s room whenever it is open and do the same thing.  They need get as close as they can and face her, no matter if she spits at them or not.

But none of them has tried to fight her or drive her off at all..  Davout is so anxious about her hissing that he tends to avoid going into her sight, and even will bite and hold back all the others from going in to her room and riling her up.  He’s willing to have a physical fight with the other cats for this, but he’s not willing to avoid her and her room in the first place.

Rhea’s attitude is at least understandable.  Anna is crazy.  When she was out and about, she would at a minimum upset Davout if he cut her off from her room with her posturing.  But this has never been her motivation for chasing Anna – she’s usually doing this when nobody’s around but her.

In fact, the presence of more boys, even small tiny kitten ones, has reduced Rhea’s need to investigate Anna’s room and/or drive her off if found.  Lately she has been very late to the party, content to hang back at the end of the hall and watch the boys hover at the fringes of Anna’s bubble of hostility.

I at least understand Rhea.  Anna is needlessly angry and hostile to well meaning cats without any reasonable provocation.  Sometimes there isn’t even another cat present.  A cat that might have some helpless kittens to defend reasonably would want to encourage this cat to clear out of the area.

What is harder to understand is the boys’ need to non-confrontational confront Anna at almost every opportunity.  They don’t want to drive her off, Davout even is anxious about going there, but he still does.  Grant is the most cat-loving cat here, pushing himself on Rhea and Davout, but he’s the last in line here.  Sherman is the most driven to enter Anna’s space, and he isn’t upset by her antics like Davout is, but otherwise likes to sleep in dark corners away from all the action in the room.

So what are the boys trying to do?  It has to be well-intentioned and important in their eyes, but I’m haven’t been able to decide just what they thing will happen.