Difficult cat sibling

It’s day five and a half of recognition aggression, we have followed all the right steps for reintroduction as stated pretty much everywhere -

• feliway friends plug-ins
• Scent swapping items
• Covering them with the same scents and regularly petting scent carrier places on their body
• Swapping the room they reside in
• Feeding either side of a door
• Then through a clear barrier
• keep distracted while in the same space

• ‘eat play love’

  I should add that before her brother went to the vet and got neutered they were the best of friends and littermates. Completely inseparable and wouldn’t even pee without each other, they are 5 months old and we’ve had them since 10 weeks so we know there is no prior aggression past normal play aggression between them, you would not see one without the other.

We’ve reached the point now where they will play together in the same room and even sometimes eat but I would say 50% of the time the problem cat will eat, the other is a big soft doofus who will eat either way and hasn’t showed any aggression at all and just submits despite being swatted at and even experiencing the beginnings of a fight that my partner managed to split up.

This all sounds like great progress right?

This is where I’m stuck and it gets tricky, she will walk right up to him to sniff him and he will do something as small as turn his head by no more than 1cm and she’s hissing at him and trying to attack again, her body language before these types of occurrences is completely relaxed, happy tail, relaxed eyes, perky ears and no hair on end, flopping on her back and no puffy tails, so there is absolutely no indication of when that behaviour is coming, and how are they meant to interact if she can’t even accept him doing something as small moving his head… despite the fact that she is the one initiating the interaction.

This means that although they are getting some play and time together, every interaction ends on a positive note because you just cant predict when she will go crazy!

I’m really open to any advice because at this point we are lost on how to move forwards when her body language is so unpredictable.

submitted by /u/LL197
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/qabykg/difficult_cat_sibling/