<snip>

He's throwing a tizzy because you have your Mom's cat now.  Any time
you bring a new cat into the house, there will be fights to establish a
new pecking order.  Protect your disabled cat if he can't defend
himself.  Trim all of the cat's claws short. Buy a feliway diffuser or
a couple of them, and place them around the house.   In a couple of
weeks they *should be* over the fighting, because the new order will
have been worked out.

-L.

I agree with what Lyn said about Feliway.  It helps many cats, however
not all.  I have a different situation where I intorduced a new adult
male cat to my 2 existing adult cats, one male, one female.  That was
almost 10 months ago and they still have to be separated despite
Feliway diffusers, spray, correctly introducing them, putting up a
screen door inside the house so they can get used to each other, and
having the aggressive cat on Elavil.

Generally, it works out and I even have faith that someday my cats will
be able to be in the same room and tolerate each other but you may have
to separate them, at least when you're not home.  You especially need
to keep Spam safe.  Maybe your vet will have some suggestions although
they usually don't seem to be all that up on behavioral problems.

I would definitely give the Feliway a try, though, and you may just
have to reintroduce all of them all over again, even the original 3
cats.

Candace

stacia@xmission.com (Glitter Ninja) wrote:

Clip the aggressor's claws. If you can't tell, clip all of them.
Clipping claws is not difficult when you wake your cat up from a
nap. I use a horizontal flashlight which lays on the floor shining
upwards. I put the cat between my legs and sit on it. Wear glasses
or goggles. If you have a problem with being scratched, stick some
packaging tape on the other paw.

However difficult, that is the solution to the worst part of your
problem. Of course, you don't want the cats to go outside with
clipped claws.

I would get to it and do it if I were you. And make it a habit. Just
clip them short enough so they won't be penetrating skin for a
while. I would not risk making them bleed.

I would not just go by which one appears to be the aggressor. I
would also try to determine which one is encroaching on the other's
territory. My older female cat, Kiki, has been very rough on the new
young male cat since he arrived over one year ago. However, he has
been gaining territory and making her nervous. Currently, his claws
are clipped because she has run out of fight. At the same time, he
is still very timid. Recently, she was very close to him and licked
his back a couple of times, and he leaped away and turned around
like she was trying to hurt him (that was amusing).

I would immediately give your older cat lots of attention. The
stress might not be so easy to notice but might be extreme.

Good luck.

Your cat definitely should be seen by a vet to rule out a medical cause
for this behavior, but this could also have been caused by his seeing a
cat outside and exhibiting redirected aggression, or stress caused by
some sort of upheaval in the home (construction, etc.)

It IMPERATIVE that you separate Simon from the other cats *immediately*
and allow *no* contact for at least a week or two. Allowing the fighting
to go on is  seriously escalating your problem and if you continue to
let it go on it could permanently damage the relationships between the
cats to the point where you can't undo it.

Separate Simon for awhile and then try gradually reintroducing him to
the other cats. You can start that after the isolation period by
temporarily replacing the door to the room he is in with a screen door
so he can start out by seeing the other cats without being able to get
to them. At that point you can work on developing positive associations
with the other cats by feeding them together on either side of the door,
giving treats the same way and playing using a feather wand that they
can bat at on either side of the door.

After some time of doing this (probably at least another week after his
initial isolation period) and seeing that Simon seems calm when the
other cats are near, you can start letting him out, closely supervised,
for very short periods of time. NEVER allow the cats to fight, and if
you see something start to happen DO NOT yell at them. Yelling only
causes the aggressor to think that he is getting yelled at because of
the other cat and will blame him, making things worse. Instead be
gentle, quietly separate them while talking sweetly to both and remove
Simon from the situation and take him back to his room. As things
improve, you can allow Simon more freedom, but don't allow him
free run of the house again until you've been home for a weekend and
have had a full day or two to observe him out and about with the other
cats.

You have to be very consistent in doing this and don't expect overnight
miracles. Undoing bad behaviors that have been allowed to develop takes
a lot of time and patience.

Megan