Big Bad Bully

Hmmmm, I thought when I had children that it would be a few years before I had to deal with issues of bullying. Unfortunately I have recently witnessed some extreme physical violence in our household that can only be described as bullying. Luckily for my children the members of our household being bullied are our cats. We have two cats – Roary and Angusina (she was a gender confused Angus as a kitten) and we all love them very much. Isaac loves them a little too much, but that’s another story. So, when we recently moved from a cottage in the middle of nowhere, to a cluster of four houses in the middle of nowhere we never even considered our cats potential social situation.

Our cats are ‘outdoor’ cats, at the old house they used to come and go in and out of a porch area as they pleased, I often tried to tempt them into the main house but they were more than happy to roam the countryside looking for innocent mice/voles/rats/shrews/rabbits to torture, kill and eat. At the new house they were confined to quarters for the obligatory two weeks and during this time we had a little visitor. In our new lounge we have French doors out onto the communal garden and every night, round about the same time, a great big black cat would come and sit outside the door staring in the window. Roary and Angusina were HORRIFIED. You’d think they’d never seen a cat before. Anyway, the time came to release them from captivity and....they wouldn’t go. I thought, fair enough I’ll give them some time, maybe they’re nervous of the strange surroundings. So, I waited, and still no matter how often I opened the door, they didn’t want to go. So, in the end I put them outside and locked the door. Cruel? Maybe, but as the saying goes, sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, they’d like it once they got out there right? And it went okay, they were gradually stepping away from the door...until the black cat turned up and all hell broke loose. The black cat didn’t really do much in my opinion (after some initial biffing about the head he just sort of stood around looking menacing) but he obviously said something quite derogatory as both Roary and Angusina have taken umbrage and are now adamant they are no way going out that door. They are almost hysterical with fear when I make a move towards the door. And still, every night, the black cat sits outside the door, as if to taunt them.