Things a Cat Person With 2–3 Cats Never Has to Think About

Aug 10, 2026

If you've got two or three cats, you've probably never had to think about any of this. We have to think about all of it, every day. Take Sootsoot. She's spayed — that part happened right on schedule with the rest of her litter, and she healed fine. Three months later, she went into heat anyway, and now she cycles regularly, like the surgery never happened. For most households that's a one-cat medical oddity. For us, it's a house-wide event, because we've also got neutered males around who still have every instinct intact and no idea what to do about it. Or take the politics. The boys mostly fight each other, but they'll also pick on the more timid female cats when they get the chance — iHop's a favorite target, easygoing and submissive enough that her brothers push their luck, and when it escalates, the answer isn't a stern talking-to, it's the spray bottles, deployed in full force. Two cats never get picked on, though: Lady Bug and Ulti. Both of them are absolute bad-asses who take no shit from anyone, regardless of size. Tony, meanwhile, has spent the better part of two years assuming he's the Alpha of all 21 — only to start eating "a few smackdowns" from siblings both younger and older than him lately. Rank, it turns out, isn't permanent. And then there's the bully club, which is apparently big enough to have its own numbering system. Tony, from the third litter, is Bully #1. Cream, from the fourth, is Bully #2. Snowdrop, from the second litter, is Bully #3. Nobody sat down and planned an org chart — it just turned out there were enough repeat offenders to need one. None of this is a complaint. It's just the math: every quirk, medical mystery, and personality clash that a small household might never encounter, we get to experience firsthand — sometimes often enough to need a numbering system for it.