The Benevolent Despot

Wanda is our undisputed alpha--that much we've established.  But that doesn't mean she has to be a Harpy about it.  Wanda uses her power as alpha judiciously.  She puts the more arrogant boys in line when she needs to (which is pretty often, actually), but she is gentle and respectful with Mister, the old man of the group.  

We're not sure why this is. I'm sure some of you are thinking to yourselves, "Maybe Mister is actually the alpha."  You would be wrong.  Mister is so timid around the other cats that it's painful to watch sometimes.  We've narrowed it down to two possibilities--either Wanda is just a benevolent despot who wields her power in a discriminating manner, or else she's just terrified that Mister is going to "go off" sometime, and do something really stupid.  Because Wanda can hold her own, I'm betting on the former, but Sean seems to think that Wanda recognizes that Mister is probably the most unstable of the four cats that she has more regular dominion over, and she's just too smart to mess with him.  Which is a pretty good argument, by the way.  

And after all, Wanda did just start a girl-fight with Mango the other day, for reasons we can only imagine.  I guess even a benevolent despot can have the occasional bad day.