A Little Spat With Brainball

Oh dear. Brainball and I had a little spat. Nobody got hurt, but it shook me up a bit.



By nature, I'm more of a people-cat than a cat-cat, though for the most part I get along fine with my siblings at home. I have a soft spot for MaoMao -- we like to nose-kiss, and sometimes we play chase.

But Brainball and I are pretty distant. We tolerate each other, but usually we stay out of each other's way. Part of this may lie in our very different purr-sonalities: I'm a girly-girl, feminine kitty, and Brainball is a tough, no-nonsense Alpha Cat.



And unfortunately, we misunderstand each other sometimes. Brainball is almost twice as big as I am, so she makes me nervous, and when I act nervous, she misreads me and thinks I'm challenging her for the Alpha Cat position (when I'm not at all inclined to do that). Maybe I confuse her, too, because even though she's the biggest cat here, she's not the eldest. I am.

Mom and Dad keep boxes around the house for us Ballicai to play with, and there's a box in the kitchen which is Brainball's. She scratches on it all the time and lets MaoMao and Dorydoo scratch on it, too. But she gets kind of upset when I scratch on it.

I scratched on it this morning only to find her looking at me like, "Watch yourself." I stopped scratching. She gave me a level stare which meant, "Please don't do that again, Marilyn." Then she walked away.

Well, I got nervous and followed her to the living room (Why do I sometimes follow Brainball when she's making me nervous? I have no idea!), and when she jumped on the chair and turned to face me, she hissed.

Her hissing made me even more nervous (Brainball is really, really big after all!), and before I knew what I was doing, I acted out of defensive aggression and swatted at her. EEK! Why did I do that? *sigh*. I know she doesn't want to hurt me -- Brainball is a very benevolent Alpha Cat.

But when I swatted at her, I made her pretty mad, and she started trying to cuff me. Before either of us could get carried away, Mom clapped her hands loudly and said "Break it up," and we broke it up: we both defer to Mom. Mom's the Alpha-Alpha.

Hopefully Brainball and I won't have another spat for a while. Our spats really are infrequent, thank goodness! But when they happen, they make me fuzz up. So to calm down, I snuggled up on my purr pad and dreamed of my darling Mickeybear -- he's a big kitty, too, but he never, ever makes me nervous -- I always feel so safe with him.