Tater ran away, and now Jade is furious.

I have two cats, Tater and Jade. They have always gotten along pretty well. They never did anything more than playfight.

Tater is a rotund tabby who I adopted about 7 years ago from off the street. He's the friendliest cat I've ever known, he loves everyone and everyone loves him back.

Jade is a black cat, she's very introverted. She warms up cautiously and she's very withdrawn from most people besides her "Mommy" (me). She adores me and worships the ground that I walk on. She's quiet and shy and very affectionate to me.

Tater recently decided to go for an adventure out in the big bad scary outside world. He got hurt kinda bad, we made a trip to the emergency animal hospital to get some wounds cleaned up. Read More Here

Ever since Tater's been back in my apartment Jade has been furious with him. In fact, one of the wounds on Tater was fresh enough looking, I'm fairly certain that Jade caused it. Almost anytime she's near Tater she starts making god-awful screaming noises and attacks him. Poor Tater is so busy being banged-up he hardly has a chance to get away from her.

It's so completely out of character for Jade to do, its got me particularly worried. One time she was so upset with Tater that by the time I got her away from him, she was busy hissing and biting at me. She's never even done that before.

I've been keeping them seperated, but my apartment is small (one bedroom, one bath) and I feel like I'm playing favorites when I let one of them stay in the bedroom, but lock the other out.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Tater has run away before and Jade's been irritated about it in the past, but she's always warmed back up to his presence and she NEVER hurt him before.

I'm hoping that tonight after work, all three of us can have some nice and peaceful quality time to get re-acquainted. But I'm quite hesitant to cause further stress to either of them, especially Tater since I want him to concentrate on getting healthy again.

I am sure Jade is smelling things she does not like. Have you tried the vanilla or feliway? There is no gaurantees but many people have said it has worked.

First off, until Tater is completely better, keep Jade away from him.

Tater came back wounded, and when cats are wounded, scared or ill they smell different and their feline buddies do not recognize them at all. Plus while he was at the vet, he picked up lots of different smells, and he also picked up the anesthesia smell as well.

Take a towel and gently rub Tater all over, then rub Jade, do this several times, keep switching them back and forth.

You can also dust each cat with Brewer's Yeast to help neutralize the smell, or use vanilla extract, a little bit under their chins and at the base of the tail. But keep Tater away until he has fully recovered, daily doing the towel rub and the vanilla extract or brewer's yeast trick

Don't "feel bad" and don't let your guilty feelings of allowing your cat to escape, supercede the fact that these two need to be apart for now. It won't be forever until they can come back together, but it will take time, days, weeks, months- it depends on you and how vigilant you are with the scent swapping/neutralizing

Hissy once recommended Vanilla extract for my cats ( one got sick and I had to quarrinteen him for a few days) My cats were freeking at him b/c they didnt reconize his smell so i put the vanilla on all four and they were fine!