I know my situation might not be unique, but maybe someone will read this and know exactly what to do.
A little background:
My husband and I live in a two bedroom apartment. We've had our female cat, Chloe, for about 3 years, and our male cat, Jack, for a little over a year.
When we first got Jack we kept him in a seperate room and attempted to introduce them slowly. This was hard, however, because he's a little high-strung and was jumping up on things in the room, knocking things over, meowing like crazy (keeping us up at night), etc. At first we would let Jack out only when we were home, and after about 3 weeks we let him have full reign of the apartment.
Both are about 7 years old, spayed and neutered, and have been checked out by a vet recently to rule out any health problems.
Chloe is generally a very agreeable lap cat and very sweet, and a little shy.
Jack's personality is more outgoing, very curious, energetic, and can be aggressive and nervous (bites sometimes - not play biting). He also has a really strong prey drive.
The problem seems to be that Chloe hated him from the get-go and Jack views her as his prey. Any time they are within sight of each other Chloe starts growling and hissing and sometimes runs up and slaps him. He cowers away and is afraid of her.
However, there are times when she's walking by and he gets in pouncing position, eyes dialate, and he goes after her like he's going after prey. She retaliates by scratching him and he runs off. I can't figure out if it's a game for him, or he really can't stop himself from going after her because it seems really instinctual on his part. When we catch it in time, we spray him with a water gun, which usually calms him down.
After a year of this it doesn't seem to be any better. Although we haven't witnessed it, Jack might have started attacking her as well. Recently we saw a somewhat large scab on Chloe's ear, and then a couple days later we noticed she was having problems with her eye. We took her to the vet and it was determined that it was probably from a cat fight. Her inner eyelid was torn and a small flap of skin was hanging into her eye. They cut the flap off and she has to wear a cone, have antibiotics and eye drops for a week.
Jack stresses her out all the time, and like I said she is normally very agreeable and sweet. I'm not sure which came first, her attacking him or him chasing her, but I feel like if Jack can get his prey drive under control the situation would improve a lot. I'm just not sure how to do that.
We have tried the Comfort Zone diffuser and it didn't seem to help. I'm going to get the Feliway spray soon. Any other ideas? I don't want to have to keep them in seperate rooms because he gets destructive and she scratches at the carpet in front of the door (destroying it) and both meow like crazy.
I don't expect them to be friends, but the fights are getting out of hand. If they would just ignore each other I would be thrilled!
Getting rid of either of them is NOT an option.
Any ideas?
