Cat scares his sister but doesn't mean to

This may be a complicated tale, but I want to get the facts straight if I can, so please bear with me.

Bonnie and Clyde are brother and sister European shorthairs, about eighteen months old. They both have free run of the house and can go outside whenever they please. Clyde is not particularly big compared to most cats, but is quite muscular and (and this is the problem) doesn't know his own strength. Bonnie is more intelligent, but also much smaller.

Initially, the two were inseparable, but grew apart somewhat -- this disappointed us, but things didn't seem especially bad. Clyde adored -- and still adores -- Bonnie, but Bonnie has been less tolerant of him and would frequently growl or hiss at him to back off if he came too close. Although oddly they would often eat out of the same dish without any problem.

That changed a week ago, when Clyde attacked Bonnie as if he didn't recognise her, and chased her out of the house. He then gave Bonnie's favourite sleeping place a good sniff, so I think Bonnie must have come home smelling of something that set Clyde off.

Since then, Clyde hasn't tried to attack Bonnie; on the contrary, he still adores her and just wants her company. Unfortunately, this incident scared Bonnie so much, she's even more nervous of him than before, and is staying away sometimes for 24 hours at a time, coming home to eat and perhaps sleep if she thinks she can get some peace.

Sometimes things seem to be improving; just two days ago, I had them both in the same room and feeding them their favourite treat, and that went without incident. Other times, Bonnie bolts as soon as she sees Clyde, and unfortunately Clyde will then lumber after her with no malicious intent at all, but this just spooks her even more. This then upsets Clyde, who simply doesn't understand why this is happening, and the whole thing seems to be making him depressed.

We have one advantage at the moment. The way our house is built, we can close off access to the stairwell. In practice, this means we can have Bonnie upstairs and Clyde downstairs, and arrange for either one of them (but not both at the same time) to also have access to outdoors (they have access through the cellar). However, we're in the process of buying some land elsewhere and are going to build a house on it which we will be moving into spring or summer next year, and that option won't be available to us any more.

I would really like to know what we can do about this. We have two very upset cats, one of which is also extremely rattled, and we're not exactly finding it easy. I'm not convinced that Bach flower remedies are the miracle cure my wife hopes they will be, but what can we do to a) calm Bonnie down and restore her trust in Clyde, and b) get Clyde to stop running after her all the time?

Yes, Clyde doesn't have any malicious intent towards Bonnie that we're aware of. But he's big and clumsy and not too bright, and doesn't seem able to take the hint. Sometimes he'll sit and stay when Bonnie growls at him, but won't move away; and if she bolts, he'll run after her and come back all depressed when she gives him the slip.

Smelling of male cat is the theory we're working on to explain last week's incident -- either that or pine marten. There is a new tom in the area: we can't tell if he's neutered or not, but he is making our cats jumpy, and in fact we believe that tom and Bonnie have had at least one actual fight. Whether that's the root cause of the problem or something that is just exacerbating it, we really can't say.

Also, Clyde's started scratching the furniture, which I understand is a sign of stress.

Ah, in fact I'm glad you mentioned Feliway, because that is one thing my wife has been talking about. If anyone wants to share their experiences with it, please do. I understand it uses pheremones and such to reduce stress -- will that be enough, do you think?

Re Bach remedies and alcohol: That's the problem we ran into. First attempt, chemist gave my wife a preparation in alcohol, and my wife had to do a read-my-lips spiel: "It-is-for-our-cats. No-al-co-hol." Second attempt, it was in acetic acid (assistant: "How do you know they won't like it?").

Yes.

In fact, the only other time Clyde attacked Bonnie was after the surgery. It was fine until Bonnie peed and Clyde caught a whiff, then sniffed her backside, then unleashed himself. We had to separate them until whatever it was had worked its way through Bonnie's system. That, though, was over pretty quickly and we had a few more months of peace and harmony.

Yes, I've looking around the forums, and Feliway does seem to be highly recommended for all sorts of things.

Anything else, though? I'd like to believe you can just plug it in and let it solve all your problems, but it can't be that simple, can it? What should we be doing as regards keeping them apart or getting them back together? Is it going to be like introducing a new cat to the household? And once they get outside, do the calming effects linger?

Update:

After a day and a night on the tiles, save for what could only have been a couple of hours at home, Bonnie slipped in and made for her favourite bed upstairs. We closed the door (I have my office up here so she wasn't abandoned), and she slept for most of the day. She's just gone out, and encountered Clyde in the garden. There was, though, no hissing or growling, although Bonnie clearly didn't want anything to do with Clyde. Clyde did follow her for a while, but didn't come too close and didn't follow her over the wall.

That's a vast improvement. My wife says that exhaustion was obviously making Bonnie more nervous.

Even so, we still have some way to go. In particular, Clyde tends to keep watch, and one of his favourite spots is right by the cats' secret entrance. If Bonnie is too intimidated to approach him, that's going to be a problem.

Well, it looks as if there's been a territorial dispute, and I'm not sure if it's settled yet. It seems that Bonnie has the little room up here and, as far as I can tell, a neighbour's garden; Clyde has the big room up here, the living room downstairs and our garden, which is a pain for Bonnie because she has to cross it to get in and out. At least Bonnie isn't being intimidated quite as badly as she was.

My wife came home with something similar to Feliway -- it's called "Catitude" (oh, how I laughed). Turns out that around here at least, Feliway is only sold by vets. The main difference is that Catitude has to be refilled after a week.

Now, if we could just get Bonnie and Clyde to share the garden again, we'll be well on the way to normality. If somebody happens to know how that could be done...

In theory, although when they meet indoors, they're often okay bar a little growling and hissing from Bonnie, which is where we were before this all started. The biggest problem is that Clyde now sees himself as a guard cat, and has taken to patrolling the garden and standing guard on the patio or at the front door. It's sweet, but he's getting obsessive about it and really doesn't like being hauled indoors unless he's hungry or dropping from exhaustion, and this seems to be making Bonnie nervous about coming indoors.

I'm beginning to think that the appearance of this strange tomcat has awoken some kind of territorial instinct in Clyde, and Bonnie is having a hard time adjusting to that... something like that, anyhow.

Well, Bonnie hasn't been home now for 26 hours. This isn't a very encouraging sign.

Panic over. She's back, unhurt, tired and hungry, but otherwise in good spirits, it seems.

Of course, she had to wait until I'd finished printing out the posters. And now I need more toner.

The way Bonnie came back suggests she got shut in someone's cellar or garage. There wasn't a moment's hesitation: she suddenly appeared from nowhere, shouting at the top of her voice, and shot straight into the house.

I really don't want to start a discussion about the rights and wrongs of allowing cats out; suffice to say that where our cats are concerned, my wife and I share some very strong views on this point, and turning them into indoor cats is for us a second-to-last resort (the last resort being, of course, giving one of them away).

That said, as winter approaches, they will have to get used to much less freedom. This house is so badly insulated, we have to keep most of the doors closed when it gets cold. (We're about to start building a house of our own, and are planning to move in next year, saving what we calculate will be a four-figure annual sum on heating bills alone.) To a certain extent, it's going to be like having them as pretty-much-almost-indoor cats.

You're telling me that keeping two outdoor cats shut indoors 24/7 when one of them panics if she thinks the other is in the next room is more likely to make them happy? I know it is possible to keep indoor cats very happily, and I have met plenty of cats that refuse to go outside at all, but Bonnie particularly was never much of an indoor cat, needs plenty of space to burn off excess energy and new things to explore, and would more likely go stir crazy, especially with the situation as it currently is. At least now Bonnie has an escape route; I'm not sure that closing that option off for good is going to be anything other than counter-productive.

I wonder if people are taking into account the fact that this is not quite like introducing a new cat into the household. The advice I've been getting so far seems to assume that Bonnie doesn't know Clyde, but the problem is that Bonnie does know Clyde. The issue came to a head when Clyde basically attacked Bonnie and, to make matters worse, she was in the one room in the house she considered to be her private space. Keeping them apart -- which we are doing as a matter of necessity -- has so far resulted in Bonnie withdrawing from most of the house which they'd previously shared and Clyde pretty much taking over. Swapping scents I could see might work if they didn't know each other, but Bonnie already associates that scent with unpleasant things, in particular being attacked in the place she feels safest.

Basically, I disagree with your assessment that allowing them to roam is what's making them unhappy. Quite the reverse, actually, especially with Bonnie, who was never happier than when she was helping my wife with the gardening. Perhaps you should have been there.

I'm not rejecting all advice out of hand, please understand. I'm just not entirely convinced, and I'm weighing up all possibilities very carefully. This isn't something I want to get wrong, and I can't see how keeping them indoors is the right thing to do under these circumstances.

They have a secret entrance through the cellar. Or, when my wife closes off all the exits, she holds out bravely until Bonnie stops mewing to get out and starts growling.

That's always a risk with outdoor cats, but it would always be a risk with a cat like Bonnie. We kept the cats indoors until after Bonnie had had her stitches taken out after being spayed, and they were always very keen to get out into the garden if they could. Bonnie actually succeeded once in a complex plan that involved getting on top of the refrigerator. So far, however, she's always been very glad to get back despite everything, and calms down a lot after a good sleep on her bed.

We have a fair idea of where Bonnie's territory is. At the moment it seems that our cats have divided the neighbourhood between them: Clyde takes everything to the north and west, Bonnie to the south and east. We have a very good relationship with out neighbours, and from what we've been told and the general lack of deer ticks and other tell-tale parasites, she doesn't roam beyond a block or two. Everyone here knows Bonnie and Clyde very well.

It's unlikely she'll just move in to a new home, as she is very cautious of strangers, although very inquisitive. If it does happen, though, we'll hear about it and we'll also have to accept it. As sad as it would be to bid Bonnie farewell, if she's happier with someone else, it wouldn't be fair to drag her back.

Having finally got a good look at that other cat, we think he is neutered. But while I understand the logic here, we knew it was time to get our cats fixed when an un-neutered tom sprayed right by the patio door and Clyde, who had never been outside, reacted to it in a very obvious manner.

How long will that take, though? Has this sort of thing been done before?

Bonnie is highly intelligent and thus very easily bored. Once she's been up somewhere and realised that there's not a great deal else to do except lounge, she'll not make the effort again, as various unused platforms, walkways and climbing posts bear testimony -- and this was before she was introduced to the outdoors. Toys and games are discarded once all possibilities are exhausted. Puzzles are either solved within minutes and then discarded, or rejected as unsolvable. I have seldom seen a cat think as much as Bonnie, and the only way to entertain her indoors for any length of time would be to invite a succession of electricians, plumbers, decorators and carpenters in to give Bonnie something to watch. Processes fascinate her, but not ones she's seen before.

Neither of those options would suit either cat, especially Bonnie. I can't imagine a more effective way of making her turn against us.

Of course there are risks involved in having outdoor cats; but I would like our cats to live with us because they choose to, not because they cannot escape. It's hard work and full of potential heartbreak, as well as risks, but with Bonnie it's a necessity: she wouldn't survive a day as a farm cat, but she, more than any pet cat I have ever encountered, would be thoroughly depressed if we kept her in.

All of that said, fortune may be on our side in the guise of a sudden deterioration in the weather. According to my wife, after Bonnie had slept most of the morning, she was in and out like a yoyo: Clyde would appear, Bonnie would leave, and five minutes later Bonnie would be demanding to be let back in (no point in going through the cellar when somebody can let her in through a window). This is a step forward even if it doesn't sound like one. When Bonnie is safely in her room, she seems a lot less on edge if Clyde happens to be skulking around, and my wife accidentally shut them both in upstairs and nothing happened at all. Bonnie also seems to be trying to get comfortable in the dining room, but that's clearly a work in progress, probably because it has Clyde's scent everywhere now.

My vague plan is to try to keep Bonnie upstairs and Clyde downstairs as much as possible for now. There's a fresh blanket on Bonnie's bed which will eventually be taken to the spot on the window ledge in the dining room, my reasoning being that, well, anything that helps reassure Bonnie can't do any harm. We can close off one or both floors from access to outside, which is a great help at nights: it's usually fairly easy to bring Clyde in, and although he'll protest, once he sees we mean business, he'll philosophically settle down to sleep, and Bonnie can sneak back in to her inner sanctum without fear of Clyde molesting her. We've been doing that now for several days.

Well, so much for my vague plan. My wife accidentally set in motion a chain of events that saw them eating together, but ended in feline fisticuffs. At 4am. I don't know whether Clyde attacked Bonnie or Bonnie tried a pre-emptive strike. My wife thinks Clyde just wanted to play, but if that's true, that's not how Bonnie saw it.

I've told my wife that if we don't get this sorted, we will have to give Bonnie away. If that doesn't make her more careful, nothing will.

Well, that is part of my vague plan, yes: try to keep them separate for now and do the whole reintroduction thing step by step. I can't think of anything else to do and neither can anyone else, so it's all we've got and apart from a little sanity, we have nothing to lose. I'm just not clear on how long this will take, but as it happens I work mostly from home and my wife is on holiday for the next two weeks, so it should be manageable in theory.

My wife did pop down to the pharmacy for some Bach flower remedies, and the pharmacist called out his new assistant who appears to be something of an expert on cats. Her first question was whether the cats were, by any chance, between about 18 and 24 months; and yes, they are just coming up to 18 months. She reckons that about that age, cats go through a process of asserting their personality -- basically, this is a stage they're going through. If she hadn't guessed their age so accurately, I would have ignored this advice, but as it is... can anyone comment on that?

My wife was actually away this afternoon leaving me to cope on my own and, more by luck than judgement, I've managed to keep the cats apart and let them out alternately. It helps that the weather is now so rotten, neither of them want to be out for more than a couple of hours at a time, but it does mean keeping tabs on where each cat is and being quick with the doors.

Progress report: My wife is still a bit distracted in the "make sure specific doors are closed" department.

Bonnie is no longer fearful of Clyde, just really, really crabby towards him. She has, however, decided that we're on her side and is seeking to take advantage of the situation. Yes, she knows perfectly well we're keeping them apart, and she's trying her best to engineer the situation so we have to confine Clyde to the living room all day.