HELP!

[GD123]

My wife and i have two cats.

The first is a 4 year old Moggie. Well behaved, converted from house cat to outdoor cat. She really is a great cat.

Our 2nd cat is a little more firey. She is a two year old moggie. A little temperamental but nothing we can not handle induvidually.

Our problem is that since the introduction of our younger cat, the younger cat appears to have taken over the house as her own territory and our 4 year old is terrified and can not sleep at home and has to watch her back whilst eating. We accept that we didnt introdue the cats properly and that the problem may lie here but we now have absolutely no idea what to do. We have tried the plug ins etc, tried bringing the older cat in and locking the younger one out but thats no good for either of them.

Can anyone suggest anything that might help. Others have suggested just locking them in a room together but i dont think that would end well and i dont think i could do it to my older cat (she really is terrified).

Any help or advice would be appreciated, we now have no idea where to go and are considering re-homing which really is the last thing we want to do. Both cats are loved very much and we would hate to give one up. The older cat refuses to come in and will sleep outside ion the pouring rain or snow to avoid coming back home.

[Crewella]

So sad, I really feel for your older cat. Sometimes, it just won't work and you do have to make tough decisions. I've been in that position myself, so I feel for you too!

However, if you're prepared to put the time in, it might just be worth starting from scratch again and going through the whole introduction process from the start. You'd need to give your older cat a room of her own and get her used to being indoors again and feeling safe before you reintroduce them. Cat Chat has a good info section on introductions here:

http://www.catchat.org/hierarchies.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Good luck, and let us know how you get on.

[GD123]

Thank you Crewella,

I really appreciate you taking the time to get back to me. My wife and I really don't want to give any of them up but if the tough decision needs to be made then ...

We will 100% start from scratch again, we want to make sure that we have tried absolutely everything and that re-homing one of them is the absolute last resort. Your link on introductions is excellent and we will try this before any decision is made. Thank you so much for your help and we will definitely be back to let you know how it goes.

Thanks again,

[Kay]

good luck and don't despair - it would be unusual for a 4 and 2 year old not to co-exist eventually,given time and patience, though they may never be bosom pals

I do feel in these situations it's important to see the positive as well as the negative - it pays to turn amateur animal behaviourist sometimes, and try to work out, with close observation, what the triggers are for the conflict and fear, and what minimizes it