Jesse's Nemesis (or: The Welcome Mat is NOT out!)

[ar_wahan]

We've had a neighbor cat come by several times a day for the last couple of months. There are a couple of things very weird about this. Unless you get very close to them, this visitor and Jesse are impossible to tell apart! (The irony here is that the welcome mat has the images of two black cats on it!)

 

1. The cat, except for a white patch just below its throat, is identical in coloring and build and size to Jesse. I've been told by the neighbor that this cat is female, and "just wants to be friendly." But there is clear hostility between this cat, as she glares into our house from the deck, and our cats.

2. After some initial nasty cat fights, the hostilities between the three cats (Stella hates this cat, too) have calmed down a bit to just low growling. But . . .

3. Lately  I've seen Jesse and this cat sitting very close together. The neighbor cat leans toward him and almost touches her nose to his. All the while, she is panting. She does the same (the panting) when she is glaring at him through the glass.

I have actually wondered, since Jesse was adopted from a shelter, if this cat and he might actually be siblings, and her attraction is because she recognizes a family "scent."

Anyone have any clues on what "panting" means to cats?

Comments

[starseeking.livejournal.com]

Actually I do. I often wondered why a cat would smell a spot and then start panting. It's called the "Flehmen Reaction." They're just taking a really deep smell of the scent into the jacobsomething organ.

Basically just information gathering.

[ar-wahan.livejournal.com]

"jacobsomething organ."

I'll give you 1/2 a point, WB! :D

Maybe someone else will fill us in.

[starseeking.livejournal.com]

Found this.

http://www.petplace.com/cats/why-do-cats-make-a-funny-face/page1.aspx

[ar-wahan.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Jenny suggested something I'd already considered, that the stranger cat wants to mate with Jesse (who is neutered). The article would support that. It would be interesting to learn that this cat hasn't been spayed.

[rebeccafiddler.livejournal.com]

I remember being told that panting indicated either a badly-overheated cat, or one that is suffering from heart or respiratory problems, but could also occur if a cat was seriously stressed. I've seen the stress reaction in a couple of our cats, usually when they had to ride in a car for any length of time.

My 2p worth...

[ar-wahan.livejournal.com]

Starseeking had a link to an interesting article, if you want to take a look!

[jenny_evergreen]

It's actually probably mating behavior...

[ar-wahan.livejournal.com]

I have thought that, too, and there still may be something to it. The love/hate aspect could be because she wants to mate and he, er, can't help. She also pants when glaring at Stella (female cat) through the door.

[jenny_evergreen]

http://cats.about.com/cs/pregnancybirth/a/mating_game.htm

Actually, in my limited experience, the mating process is usually a love/hate thing with female cats. She's probably frustrated because the Flehmen reaction is telling her there's a tom around, but she can't "find" him, since Jesse is neutered.

[ayeamspartacus.livejournal.com]

That's so typical for cats.

Mrs. Pooka Cat was a horrible racist. She hated black cats. I'm pretty sure it stemmed from an incident before I got married, where she had a huge stray black tomcat try to attack her through a window screen one night. (That was a bad neighborhood for cats as well as people.)

Her whole life, she would immediately get angry and begin hissing and making like a tea kettle if she saw a solid black cat, especially if it was male.

One night in Dallas, she woke me up with urgent meows (remember, this cat once alerted me to a blown pilot light on a gas oven this way.) There had been a lot of trouble in the area lately, so I quietly followed her downstairs, with a pistol in hand. Only to have her lead me to the storm doors and start hissing at a black cat in our backyard. I laughed at her, but I put on some pants, put up the gun, and shooed him off anyway. Pooka would never have been able to relax with him in "her" yard.

I miss that cat.