How to make two cats share...

If you have two cats, how do you make them share?

We have two cats that love the hallway mat. They haven't learned to share, especially on Saturday evenings for some reason. When they both want to lie on the mat at the same time, a huge fight breaks out. How do you prevent these things from happening? How do you teach them to share?

 

We don't. They're cats, lol.

In all seriousness, I really don't think you can teach cats to share things like that. They want what they want and if that means fighting for it sometimes, they will. You could potentially lay down another mat, but if they want the same one, they may still fight over it.

 

I have two cats and they have never fought over anything like that!

My cats clearly have an Alpha cat though, so Bandit is the leader, he is king cat, and Pussington is the follower. They do share everything though, they eat together, sleep on the bed together, sit no the window together, and they get upset when they are alone.

During our first two months with them we put them in a sealed box to sleep to stop them getting hurt, so they would snuggle together every night for months growing up, I think this has caused their very co-dependant bond.

 

Pussington hah. What an excellent name.

When I first got my cats one of them would constantly growl and attack the other one when they were trying to eat out of the same bowl but I caught him in the act once and scolded him and since them he hasn't done it at all. They share from the same bowls of food, lay down together, play with each other and so forth with no fighting.

I suppose I'm lucky to have such brotherly love among my cats.

 

As another poster said, I don't think you can make them share, they're cats not children. The best you can do really is to separate them when they start to fight otherwise being cats, they're just going to do whatever they want for the most part.

 

I would just put down another hallway mat because it's pointless to try to make adult cats share if they don't already have that kind of bond.

 

This is what I do when I bring home a new cat.

I normally feed my cats on the steps that lead down to the kitchen from the living room. So what I do is to put the new cat's food dish a couple of steps above the step where I usually feed the other cats. This is normally far enough to make the cats not feel threatened. Then as days go by, I would bring the food dishes closer and closer. Finally I would be able to feed all the cats with their food dishes next to each other. This is a process which cannot be hurried. With some cats, it takes just three days to get them to be comfortable with each other. With other cats, it may take a week or two.

 

Interesting. Thank you all for your responses. The mat thing is getting better because now they share the third shelf of our linen closet as one lies on an old pair of pants, while the other lies on a tote bag. They also share the wet food too!