🚀 go-pugleaf

> Female cats aren't nearly as mean as males and they are
> also more affectionate.

This is a totally unfair generalization!  There may be reasons to prefer
a female cat (males are much more prone to urinary blockages, for one
thing), but my 10 year old Nick was the sweetest, gentlest and most
affectionate (also the stupidest) cat I ever knew.  His idea of
contentment was to sleep on my pillow with his neck streched across my
face, purring and drooling.  (I know, it sounds sick).

Speaking of pairs of cats, Nick and his female littermate Nora seemed to
interact very little with each other.  When they were both having
trouble with hairballs, the vet suggested it was because they spent the
whole day grooming each other, because they were bored.  I certainly
never saw any evidence of that, except on *very* cold days, and even
then they preferred to warm up by sitting in my lap, not by cuddling
with each other.  Nick won most of their fights because he was twice
Nora's size, but she provoked fights as often as he did.

Nick died a few months ago of feline leukemia and Nora has become much
more openly affectionate to me.  I'm not sure if she misses him, or if
it's just that she doesn't have to compete with him for my attention.
People have talked about personality changes when they introduce new
cats into their cats' homes; what kinds of behavior have you seen
when one of the cats dies or otherwise disappears?

Ellen Murphy
The Public Health Research Institute