DH and I decided a number of weeks ago to adopt a stray that we'd otherwise been caring for outside. She's a one year old spayed female. We have two other cats, Henry (12) and Izzy (2). We have tried to follow the conventional advice when it comes to introducing a new cat. At first, the new cat, Matilda, was housed in one of our basement rooms. Henry and Izzy new "something" was there and they sniffed us a lot after our visits with Matilda. From there, we allowed the cats to see one another a number of times through a screen door. Those interactions mostly went okay with a minimum of hissing and growling. Frankly, neither Henry nor Matilda were all that interested. Izzy was the only one of the three who seemed obsessed with the Matilda's presence.

From there, we allowed some supervised visits. At first, it didn't go all that badly because Izzy was too nervous to get all that close. Mostly, Matilda just played while Izzy hung out in the corner of the room. But when she finally got some nerve up, it rapidly went downhill. She lunges/chases/attacks at Matilda every chance she gets. We've intervened rather quickly thanks to a water bottle, so nothing has gotten out of hand, but it's still scary.

At that point in the process, Matilda had to undergo dental surgery as she's chipped a tooth on something and it had to be extracted. We kept her in an upstairs bedroom and stopped the daily visits because I didn't want to risk a fight. In the meantime, we got two Feliway diffusers for the main area of the house. One has been going for almost a week, the other for just a couple of days. So far, Izzy seems no different, and she charged at Matilda yesterday again.

I'm not really sure what to do at this point. I've never really had a difficult cat integration before so while I've been a multiple cat owner for a long time, this is the first really difficult introduction I've had to navigate. It's made all the more stressful because we otherwise have no takers for Matilda, and we've grown to really love her since she first showed up in April.

If anybody has any suggestions or words of wisdom, I'd really appreciate them. I know, sadly, that there's a chance that our home is just not the best place for her. I don't know where that leaves us though.