Miss Hissy Fit*update*9/27

[freckledimple]

We are a multi-cat house hold and always will be. We don't expect perfect harmony, but we do expect tolerance. Most of our cats get along, are all fixed, and they are even getting used to the 2 new babies. Unfortunately, we have an inter-fighting issue that we don't know how to remedy
Sheba, our 3 year small(8lbs) blue female that we have had since she was a kitten, has gotten progressively aggressive with all of the other cats. She has always let us know she would be happiest as our only cat, but was tolerant of the others.
Last Christmas, our neighbors gave us a cat they couldn't keep: Harley, a small(8.5lbs) long-haired, black female. When she first got here, she was scared of everybody. Now, she tolerates most of them, and even likes a couple.
Once Harley settled in, we still heard fighting between Sheba and Harley.
We recently got to let the cats roam regularly through the house(longer story), and everyone seemed to settle even more; except Harley and Sheba. We used think Harley instigated it all, but through careful observation we have found that Sheba starts it more often than not.
Sheba is sweet to us, and likes Bubby, but he doesn't like her because she is nasty to the rest of the cats.
If it were just Sheba and Harley, we would try counter-conditioning; but Sheba is getting bad with ALL of the other cats. We realized how bad she is behaving with the others when we saw Sky angrily chasing her through the house. Sky is not a fighter or aggressive. She has to be really upset to chase like that.
We don't know what to do. We love Sheba, but she can't keep behaving like this to the other cats.

[jensonnyjenson]

sorry to hear of your catten problems! Usually it's all about persistence and takes months for things to settle but in some cases it might never settle. Have you tried some of those (unfortunately expensive) cat calming plug ins? I am considering them at the moment as our 6 month old is beating up our 2 year old constantly and making her feel and look terribly upset.
Do you ever tell her off when she instigates fighting? Just an almighty hiss and clapping from you could make her realise you do not like what she is doing and you are the boss.
Other than that I'm not really sure! There are also medications the vets can offer but I've never resorted to that myself.
Hopefully things will get better for you soon

[K2QC]

I used a homeopathic liquid that I put in my old girl's wet food when I brought in a younger male cat into my house. The older cat was the one with the attitude and hissing up a storm at the younger cat (who mistakenly thought she wanted to play -- so he responded by bouncing over to her, right in her face, to play).

Make a long story short, I found two homeopathic products (drops) that you put in their food. Since it was the "older" cat who was acting out, she got the drops in her wet food -- and it worked. Here is a link to one of the products. http://www.petsmart.com/product/inde...ductId=2752871

I only had to use it for a relatively short amount of time before Minnie found herself in close proximity to my male cat -- and no hissing. Once I saw that, I began to reduce giving the drops and NOW, they are best buddies, sleep together, eat together, play together and all is calm.

This is the other product I also tried:
http://www.petsmart.com/product/inde...ductId=3240333

My local Pet Smart store carries them both.

Sebastian is a 4-yr. old black Devon Rex; Minnie is an 11-yr. old white Devon Rex -- both were previous show cats (from two different breeders). As you can see from the picture below, they are NOW best buddies now. Barbara

[freckledimple]

We are definately looking into trying something like Feliway, and I will look for those drops the next time we go to Petsmart.

Just to clear up any mis-communicaton, Harley is not a kitten. She is a little over 2 years old.
Any time Sheba even sees Harley, she throws a fit. We have vocaly reprimanded, sprayed water bottles, and tried some mild counter conditioning.
I guess our next try is chemical but we are not big fans of it.

[Catty1]

As K2QC said, they only had to use the drops temporarily and then were able to taper off and stop. These might break the cycle that Sheba is in; maybe she needs a little temporary extra help to settle in by being calmed down enough to see that everything is ok.

HUGS and good luck!

(PS - my vet told me a few months ago that Feliway's patent is over, so it's half the price it was. Rather than use plugins, I got a super-stretchy collar for my cat (one that will just fly off if it catches on something or he and his buddy are playfighting), and put one shot of Feliway into the collar every day. That way, the stuff is right at the source! )

[freckledimple]

Sheba went ballistic today!! I was trying to put her collar on her after spraying it with calming spray, and she EXPLODED! We ended up having to crate her until she calmed down We are definately going to try the food drops now. We have also decided that if her behavior continues, we will have her evaluated by a vet.