Cat Problems - New Female Cat is Aggressive Toward other Cats

by Marianne
(California)

My cat problems have happened because I am keeping a cat for my friends until they find jobs and get a place of their own. Their cat is a female country cat, having lived in rural Kentucky for the last five years. She has a strong hunting instinct and has two litters of kittens before she was finally spayed.

I have 4 cats, two older around 14 years old, and two younger ones about 2 years old. They are 3 females and 1 male. My friend's cat chases and hisses at all 4 cats, but is especially mean to the male cat. She will attack him as soon as she sees him, and even chases him under the bed. He has taken to hiding and will run if he even sees her.

He pooped under my bed the other night because he was too terrified to go to the litter box. Her behavior is upsetting the other cats, but traumatizing my male cat. There is no other place for my friend's cat to go, so I don't want to re-home her. However her behavior is unacceptable and I need help on what to do to correct her extreme aggression.


Reply from Liz (Editor): I sympathize with you here and understand how frustrating and upsetting these sorts of cat problems are.

If you were keeping your friend's cat long term - i.e. if you were adopting her - the you could go through a process of trying to get the cats to get along. However, as this is only a temporary arrangement, I'm not sure you'll fix the problem before your friend's cat goes away. She's obviously used to being on her own and I think it would take a large amount of training, time and effort to change her behavior. However, if you want to try, the advice on this page will help:

Cat Problems - New Cats Driven Visitor Cat Away

Is there anyone else your friends could ask to look after the cat? Failing that, is there any way you can keep her apart from the other cats? Even if it means shutting her in a room, which she probably won't like, this could well be better than the situation you've got at the moment, which isn't fair on you or your cats.

Best of luck with this and thank you for your question.