Suggestions for Agressive Male

I have a 13 year old male, Charlie, who was neutered before he was a year old. He was adopted into a household where I already had 3 female cats. Everyone got along fine. About 5 years later I brought in a much older female cat and everyone got along fine. Then one of the older females died and I adopted a 4 month old kitten, Chloe. Charlie seems to "hate" Chloe--he attacks her every chance he gets. I don't mean a "friendly playing attack," he is extremely mean and nasty. Chloe is terrified of him. Charlie has been to the vet to check his health. We tried sedating him, which did not work out well at all and will not be tried again. We tried giving him female hormones which did not work at all. I finally gave up and have just kept them as separate as I can.

Now I'm trying to introduce another female cat that is about 4 years old and Charlie is doing it again! This attack was the most vicious I've ever seen him do! Now, of course, the other cat is terrified and doesn't want to come out of hiding--and I don't blame her.

Any suggestions what to do with Charlie? I'm getting to a point where I'm going to banish him somewhere!! He's making it impossible to have a somewhat peaceful household!!

I would say first off, before bringing anymore cats into the household, let Charley have some time off to grieve. He had one friend, who died. Cats do not understand death. They understand eat, sleep, hunt, prey and predator. All Charley knows is his friend was here, then his friend left, and this other new cat came in- so in Charley's mind, this new cat has to be responsible for the disappearance of his friend, and therefore must be destroyed.

He is also at the age where he needs to slow down a bit and not get stressed out, because stress in cats can result in sickness. I would look to the flower remedies to see if you can mellow his behavior. Chicory, Holly or Honeysuckle, or even a combination of all three. I would also start paying a lot of attention to him, even interacting with him one-on-one with catnip (if he doesn't get aggressive on nip) Nip can be good therapy. If he gets aggressive on nip, try the new honeysuckle toys. Plain Brown Tabby sells those, as well as Catnipetc. Make certain you have enough room for all these cats, and although you can't add a room on to accomodate them, you can add cat condos, cat ramps, and other things to let the cats expand their territory. Make sure you have enough litter pans- you should have two for every cat your own (ideally) In the wild, a cat will not poop or pee in the same place, and sometimes they are forced to if they are inside cats and the owner only wants to deal with one pan with multiple cats.

I'm sorry but I really have to chuckle--my house will be one great big litter box!! (It really almost already is!)

Also, Charlie didn't lose his friend recently--he lost her five years ago. And this (latest) new cat has been in the house for quite some time, although separate from the other cats, but where they can smell her. The other strange thing is that my two older girls (almost 20) like to beat the crud out of Charlie every once in awhile! Then they'll sleep together like nothing happened! But they don't hurt him like he's hurting these other two younger girls.

When I brought in Simba and once he got used to everything, he started attacking my older girls. He was (and sometimes still is) brutal and mean. We tried everything, from sedatives to more litter pans. Finally I had to go old school and just started punishing him. If he attacked the others, I gave him a timeout. He had to sit in the bathroom by himself for 10 minutes. If he did it again, it was 20 minutes. I had to retrain one of the girls to use the litterbox since he terrified her. After about 2 months, he reduced the amounts of his attacks. He seems to be jealous, if the other cats get attention or he wants something he will attack the other cats.