When we have three, or more, cats, we have levels of interaction which will increase everyone’s satisfaction and happiness.
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I already have two cats who don’t get along! Why would I want to make more problems for myself?
Because cats do not obey the laws of physics, we may add a cat, but we will subtract from our cat problems.
Third Cat, especially if carefully chosen, creates another option for cat friendship for both of the existing cats. Even in the worst case scenario, that of a lively Alpha with an anti-social Gamma, adding a third, Beta, cat will impose a different, and more flexible, dynamic.
Now, instead of one cat constantly being harassed (as they see it) by the other cat, we have Third Cat, who, being Beta, will try to make friends with everyone. They will, at the least, be an object of interest to the Alpha, taking the pressure off the Gamma. At the most, the Beta will pivot between fun activities with the Alpha, and quiet companionship with the Gamma.
All our cat relations improve.
It’s fairly easy for an aspiring Cat Appreciator to acquire two cats who don’t get along. We get a stray, we get another stray; they both have issues with abandonment and trust. We probably messed up the introductions, and then didn’t police the situation properly.
But the odds of having three cats who hate each other are fairly astronomical. Someone is going to send out a friendship feeler, loneliness doesn’t look so good any more, bridges get built.
After all, two cats who ignore each other are not a problem. Two cats who divide up the house and stay away from each other are not a problem. Cats who have differing ideas about social interaction… there’s your problem.
More cats is the solution.
Cats do not have pack behavior. But they do have social behavior.
Learn more about the different cat types.
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There’s more about multiple cats in The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See more posts on the MULTIPLE CAT ADVANTAGE.
What about just one cat in a home with just 1 person? Do you feel the cat would be very lonely? We are very close and I chat her up and whisper to her and play and give her tons of love. Is she suffering w/o a cat companion ? What do you think?
Ironically, it’s our third cat who causes the problems. We had a carefully chosen beta (Keaton) and gamma (Annie) living together happily, and then Charlotte the alpha whirled in and upset everything.
Things are just starting to settle down a year later now that Charlotte has (mostly) figured out how to play nice with Annie, but man it was a pain sometimes.
From my experience, a single cat who gets all the attention she wants when the Person is home can be very, very happy.
mirinblue some cats HAVE to be the only cat…and it can be a lovely relationship
mnemosyne….. my 3rd ,,,[although ive had probably 20 cats ..not at one time ... in my 62 years]
an uber-alpha cat who i thought might be a good playmate for the 2nd cat totally upset the balance….. this was before i started reading the way of cats…. if i had known about alphas i would have known that Monkey wouldnt be a good fit for the other two……..but then again he was such a handful in his foster home he might not have had home at all…Monkey needs some lessons on how to play nicely from Charlotte….
ps… it is the ‘carefully chosen’ part that is so important… not the number..3 can be wonderful
Ours is a four-cat household here but the dynamics differ somewhat from the description in this post seeing as three of them are littermates while one (the fourth to arrive) is nearly nine years old and unrelated to the others (who are one year old at the time of this writing).
With the littermates we actually ended up with one of each type: Cora is an Alpha girl, Brodie is a Gamma boy, and Shadow is a Beta boy. It was definitely interesting, though, even just to see how things changed when Shadow arrived, as he was trapped (the babies were feral) three weeks later than his siblings. I am really glad we managed to catch and adopt him too because he definitely seemed to provide a “missing element” to the kitty ensemble. For example, both Cora and Brodie are more apt to try directly communicating with humans these days, following Shadow’s example (though Shadow is definitely the Official Spokescat). Conversely, Cora and Brodie have taught Shadow a lot more about object-manipulation than he likely would have picked up on his own. It’s awesome and wonderful to watch them learning from each other!
As for Nikki, the FourthKitty, she’s another Beta but she quickly found her own niche as Security Patrol Cat upon arriving here. Being that much older than the others she tends to get irritated with their high-energy antics but overall she is impressively patient with them.
AnneC´s last [type] ..Raw Feeding Update 1
I discovered by happy accident how adding a cat can help. See, there was this kitten … a feral cat near my sister’s house had had a litter, and mush that I am, I ended up bringing one home. This seemed at the time like a bad idea (of course I did it anyway), because we thought we had too many cats already. And some cat problems. Two of them had intermittent issues. Litterbox problems. Hiding for long periods of time. One of them had at one point started pulling out the fur on his legs and belly. Things were more or less okay just at the moment, but we were really worried that the stress of another kitten would bring it all back worse.
I’m happy to say that it had exactly the opposite effect. In retrospect, and having read around your blog (I just recently discovered it), I guess it’s easy to see what our problem was: we had two middle-aged gamma kitties and one young alpha. The young one would mess with the other two–not out of any ill intent, I think, just boredom–and stress them out.
New kitty- he’s about a year old now–is, at a guess, going to turn out to be a beta. He’s friendlier than the others, and seems very laid back, at least when he doesn’t have the kitten-crazies. He just takes things in stride, doesn’t seem to get stressed out about anything. So now our young alpha has someone else to mess with, someone who won’t get upset about it, leaving the two older cats to lounge around in peace the way they like it.
Happy ending! And completely accidental. Lucked out there.
“Even in the worst case scenario, that of a lively Alpha with an anti-social Gamma, adding a third, Beta, cat will impose a different, and more flexible, dynamic.”
This is exactly what happened in my house. Our first cat, Oliver, is laid-back, well-behaved and easily startled. Our second (rescue) cat Weasel is hyper and constantly making trouble. He was constantly attacking Oliver (to play) and Oliver would flip out and go hide. When we added a new kitten (that we found trapped under our house), she made friends with both of her older brothers. She has the energy to roughhouse with Weasel, but she can also go cuddle with Oliver and get her ears cleaned. Everybody’s a lot happier since Grimmie came along.