Cat's mom desesperated
Hi, I’m Xelly and I really need help with my cats’ introduction because I’m honestly reaching an emotional breaking point 😞
I have a 7-year-old cat. She has basically been my life companion since she was 6 weeks old. About 5 and a half months ago, I adopted a 1.5-year-old male cat because I sometimes work during the day and felt bad that she stayed alone all the time. Peggy has always been very loving with other animals, so I thought having another cat could actually make her happier.
But honestly, I feel like I messed up the introduction from the very beginning.
They’ve fought 7 times in total:
- 5 times in my old apartment
- 2 times in my new apartment
Now I live in an apartment where:
- my older cat mainly stays in my room (which is pretty big)
- my younger cat stays in my roommate’s room (which is even bigger)
and we are trying to restart the introduction process completely from zero again.
The problem is that those last two fights were emotionally very intense for me, and I feel like the tension now isn’t really hatred… it’s more like they genuinely don’t know each other and every bad encounter keeps reinforcing fear and negative associations because they don’t see each other coming.
My younger cat came from a family that rehomed him because one of their cats (his brother) didn’t accept him. He only got along with his sister. They told me he spent most of his time isolated in a room and they felt really bad because he started getting depressed. So the thought of rehoming him again honestly breaks my heart. I really don’t want to 😞
I have genuinely tried EVERYTHING:
- pheromones
- positive play
- scent swapping
- animal medium therapy
- separation by spaces
- supervised meetings
But right now I honestly cannot afford a cat behavior specialist, and I’m feeling very alone with this situation.
I also work late almost every day, so I come home exhausted at night and try to continue working on their introduction, but I genuinely don’t know what else to do anymore.
What hurts me the most is feeling like instead of helping my older cat, I’m making her suffer. And it breaks my heart because I truly feel like they have the potential to get along. Their personalities actually seem compatible to me. I feel like the problem is me… that I didn’t know how to do this properly and now I don’t know how to fix it.
The fights usually don’t really have a clear “starter.” The last two happened because my older cat escaped from my room, suddenly saw the other cat, got startled, and everything exploded from there. But when my younger cat sees her, he also starts chasing her. So I feel like the tension exists on both sides and I don’t know how to break that cycle.
The weird thing is… they actually CAN stay calm together sometimes.
For example, if I supervise them in my room for about an hour, Peggy can stay relaxed on her cat tree while my younger cat lays on my bed, and absolutely nothing happens.
But the second one of them gets up, it suddenly feels like they start looking for each other, provoking each other, chasing, staring, and then everything starts escalating.
I even started thinking about buying an air horn or some kind of loud sound device to interrupt fights because I honestly don’t know what else to do 😞
Has anyone here gone through something similar? Do you honestly think this can still be fixed after so many fights?
I genuinely need help. I feel trapped in this situation and I don’t know how to help them or myself anymore.