2 Cats One House

by Lou
(Laguna, California)

I will try to keep this short. We live in California, and we now have two cats. One cat was an outdoor cat – Jude / female , never liked to come into the house, slept in the garage and happily prowled around our back yard and surrounding area for 10 years plus. She decided to “leave” the house when we acquired new cats about ten years ago, Max / male, being one of them./ male. Moving to the present the roles have reversed. Jude the older lives exclusively in the house and Max comes and goes as he pleases. Max is my wife’s cat, Jude relates to me, both cats are neutered.

The problem we are having is that Max pretty much terrorizes Jude when they are together. At first we tried to keep them together but “cat fights” resulted always with Max “attacking’ Jude. We “fixed” the problem by always making sure they were not in the same room, with a closed door between them. Occasionally we try to get them together again and the same thing happens, we keep thinking they are animals and they will work it out but it is not happening. Jude is obviously very unconformable, on guard, and tense wherever she senses Max is around, and only acts herself when she is sure Max is not in the house or in the same room where she is with a closed door between them

Is there any hope that they could happily co-exist in the same living space, where Max laying on my wife’s lap, and Jude on mine while watching TV together etc?

Feeling Very Bad for Jude,


Answer by Kate
Hi
well i8 think the problem is territorial and even though the two cats have been around for many years there situation has changed and so they are having to get to know each other in a new prospective. its almost like they do not know each other at all.

So i would approach this as if they are total strangers and take them through a period of introduction to help them build their confidence with each other in a safe environment. please see this page for a full description of the process

https://www.our-happy-cat.com/introducing-cats.html

However having said this, i cannot say that you will ever have the situation you are looking for where by they live in total harmony together. Older cats are very much stuck in their ways and changing that behavior can be very difficult.

Take them through the process and see if it calms the situation down a little. hopefully after this and as time passes things calm down even further. At the end of the day cats will be cats and do what comes naturally to them. i would say though that most cats fights sound and look a lot worse than they are. cats generally do not like to risk serious injury and so most of it is warning shots as it were.

i hope things settle down for you all soon

best wishes Kate

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