Letting Eli Win

Tommy and Eli were play-fighting for a close to half an hour this evening.
Tommy laid on his back 90% of the time with Eli holding onto his head from
behind, making moves like he was trying to bite Tommy's ears.

Every few minutes Tommy would let out a little squeal which had a tone that
seemed to be saying "I'm afraid of you, please take it easy on me, boss!"

A few times they both sat up facing one another and did some fancy boxing,
and Tommy would always try to walk away from it after a bit, but Eli
wouldn't let him go, he would follow and keep whapping at Tommy's tail until
Tommy consented to resume the wrestling match.

Tommy finally escaped and now Billy has taken his place as the whapp-ee. Eli
isn't giving him as much of a test because it has already been established
that Eli's stature is higher than Billy's.

Tommy is a very wise cat. He seems fully committed to defusing Eli's
aggressive urges. This morning I found the two of them snuggled together on
my bed. They looked up at me and their eyes had an expression that's very
hard to describe - so many emotions.

Adrian A...

That's cute. Did you get any video of them playing?

Pat...

You can rest assured that I wanted to, and would have, if the light was good
enough in here at night to do it. There might be an adjustment I can make to
the camera settings for low-light situations... I'll check that one of these
days so I can maybe catch the next performance.