Siblings have been fighting since the beginning of time. For parents, knowing that this is a “normal” part of life, they let them solve their differences occasionally. At times though, these quarrels start to get heated. In all honesty, parents don’t really like to see their children fight. They will intervene to diffuse the situation, especially if the fight turns physical.
This is not at all different in the animal kingdom. Mothers there are also very protective of their “children.” They will also make sure that none of them get hurt. Most of these fights start of as teasing. It starts getting a little bit more and more physical until tempers start to fly. Dogs for instance, are very playful when they are pups. It’s in their nature to bite anything and everything. This is especially true early on in life when their teeth are coming out. It creates an urge to bite anything.
For cats, it’s not that much different. They’re playful because they are very curious animals. Curiosity is one trait that cats continue to have all their lives. When cats are young, they can be troublemakers. There was one case when the mother cat had to step in to separate her two kittens. Everything started off in the kitchen counter were the two kittens started playing.
After a few minutes, this playful tease started turning more physical. The mother cat was fearing that one of them got hurt. Since the scuffle started, the cat’s owner started filming. For him, it was just another session of play between them. But the mother apparently saw something that the human wasn’t seeing. She decided to get closer and investigate what was going on. She looks at them for a couple of minutes to decide if it’s necessary for her to intervene.
As one of the kittens starts getting more vocal, she jumps on the counter herself. For a minute, she looks at the human filming as if to say, “if you’re not doing anything about this, I will.” After that, she starts to try to get the kittens’ attention. She moves them with her paw but they don’t seem to be aware of her presence. She does this one more time, trying a little harder.
When she gets their attention, she starts doing a sort of dance. This makes the kittens lose interest in their fight and they both start staring at her. When the human sees this, he doesn’t really know what she’s trying to do. For him, she was just acting weird. But when he analyzed the recording, he realized that she had been trying to get their attention focused on her instead of them fighting. It really works! The kittens stop fighting. I think it is very ingenious and clever. Next time I see my children fight, I think I know what I’m going to do!
