Warning: Wall of text incoming, hopefully I formatted this all well enough.
About a month and a half ago we had an incident with our two cats. I was preparing dinner at the kitchen counter with my boots on while Misty (8 years old, female, spayed) was standing basically right underneath my feet, unbeknownst to me. Unfortunately, Misty got stepped on. She's fine, she didn't get injured but she let out a really loud yelp and ran off, this prompted Nellie (7 years old, female, spayed) to go absolutely feral on Misty. She was chasing Misty through the house with a ferocity I had never seen from her. It all happened so fast I can't exactly remember all the details, just that it frightened my wife and I and we ended up separating them momentarily. When tensions seemed to have cooled we kind of went back to normal thinking that the loud yelp just scared Nellie and she just sort of reacted. After maybe an hour we thought everything was fine until Misty went to pounce on Nellie as she would occasionally do. Nellie went back in to hyper aggressive mode again and started chasing Misty again. That's when we knew something was definitely wrong.
We've had Misty and Nellie together for about 7 years now and there was a moment when we first got Nellie that they were kind of buddies and would hang out together but their relationship went a bit south from there. Misty started bullying Nellie, we think after Nellie came home from the vet after getting fixed. From then on they mostly just co-existed but occasionally Misty would just go and pounce on Nellie, they'd have a few swats back and forth, or Nellie would run away and that would mostly be the end of it. We tried to have plenty of toys around and plenty of places for them to get away from each other, neither one of them were ever interested when we tried to actively play with them with toys. Nobody ever got hurt so we figured that's just how things were.
Fast forward to today. After we separated them we started doing some reading on redirected aggression in cats after a traumatic event and we started reading about reintroducing cats to each other. We started with feedings through a closed door and occasional site swapping and eventually worked our way up to feeding them right next to each other through a pet gate. All that seemed to be going really well until we started trying to have them both out in the rest of the house together. For the most part things seemed to have just gone back to normal. They're mostly indifferent towards each other but Misty occasionally gets the urge to pounce on Nellie, when she does that I try and distract her with treats or with a laser pointer, and those work for a time but even when I think I've gotten all the play energy out of them both and we can all relax Misty will just up and pounce on Nellie out of nowhere. Unfortunately, now when Misty pounces things are a bit more aggressive with more hissing and sometimes even growling and we're afraid if we can't break it up one of them might get real hurt.
This has been going on for about two weeks now. They either are pretty indifferent towards each other or Misty is suddenly attacking Nellie. Things aren't really improving and when they're both out in the house together they both seem tense. We have been trying to get them to eat snacks together, play together, we got one of those pheromones diffusers and nothing seems to be working. If I could get them back to the way they were then I suppose I would be fine with that and try to work on improving their relationship but things are definitely worse now and they're not showing any signs of improving. Misty spends most of the day locked away in a room cause that's the best we can do to keep them sequestered. When we have them out together we can usually go for 2-3 hours at a crack before we either have to separate them so we can prepare dinner or go to bed or Misty attacks Nellie and we need to separate them before it escalates.
I just don't know how to proceed from here. It seems cruel to have Misty locked away in her room for hours, Nellie cannot be locked in a room by herself as she gets too stressed out and could seriously potentially hurt herself trying to open the door. I can't have them both out in the house without being on edge the entire time not knowing if Misty will just attack out of nowhere. I definitely don't want to just let them work it out on their own because I definitely think one of them will get hurt. Lately now when Misty is locked up at night she's been starting to meow loudly and scratch at the carpet and the door, waking up my wife and I. I shudder to think of having to give up either of them because they've been a part of our lives for so long but I'm at the end of my rope, either the cats are going to seriously injure each other or they're going to drive my wife and I insane.
If you've made it this far, thank you for reading, it was a bit cathartic to just write this all out at least; and if anybody has some good advice or kind words to offer, I would love to hear it.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/iw8aqc/trying_desperately_to_reintroduce_two_cats/
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