I'm writing with a heavy heart to let PT know that my little Ember is not working out here.
In short, he is beating the snot out of Kyubey.
When they two kitties first met, Kyubey was eager to make friends, and Ember was too. Ember seemed to play a little rough, so we would try to distract him and make sure he got plenty of playtime with us two-leggers to keep him busy. Thankfully, Kyubey has a tall hiding spot that Ember can't get up to.
It's only gotten worse over the last few weeks, and I am scared that Ember is going to seriously injure Kyubey one of these days. Ember plays with Kyubey by LAUNCHING himself at Kyubey's face, wrapping his paws around Kyubey's neck, and bunny-kicking with his back feet while ripping out Kyubey's chest hair. He is often seen with a big tuft of white hair hanging out of his mouth.
We are continuing to try and distract him from Kyubey, and I play with him A LOT...I only work 25 hours a week, so I'm home a lot to play with him...the other night I kept switching out wand toys and we played for more than two hours straight. Ember was panting by the end of it, and laying down every time he stopped running. Still, when I turned the lights out for bed twenty minutes later, he attacked Kyubey immediately.
For his part, Kyubey will not stick up for himself. He lays on his back crying, and only occasionally will he hiss or try to get away. He still approaches Ember to touch noses and try to make friends, but it always ends with Kyubey on the floor being beaten up and crying. Kyubey is starting to lose weight and pull the fur out of his back (something he does when very stressed), so we've put ourselves on the list to return Ember to the no-kill shelter where we got him.
For my part, I've learned that I need to be VERY thorough when reading the records of a cat I'm adopting. on 10/19, I was looking through Ember's shelter paperwork to find his rabies certificate when I spotted two important notes under the heading "Behavior":
First: "If adopted into a multi-cat home please educate on proper cat to cat introductions. Harper is a very active cat with a rough play style. He may be too overwhelming for more mellow or shy cats."
Then: "very rough player and will target/pin smaller cats to the ground. Not a candidate for the community room."
I was LIVID. I KNOW Kyubey is about as mellow as they come, and I would have passed Ember up if I had seen that he wasn't a suitable companion. I realize it's partly my fault for not reading, but I had 12+ pages of paper in front of me and I missed those two notes. I really really really wish I'd been told.
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