This is a little long. The gist of it is this: I think it depends on the cat, but all three of my cats have drastically reduced anxiety. It won't fix all your problems or change the entire temperament of a cat, but at least in my house all three cats are much more relaxed, they sleep better, they are friendlier towards me, and the non-recognition aggression from one visiting the vet is going away much faster with the spray than without. Read the rest if you like long-winded cat lady stories with details. Or if you are trying to integrate or reintegrate cats and it's 3am, you have to get up for work in like two or three hours but you can't sleep because of the meowing and door scratching, and all you can think about is how you're afraid to leave your angry cats alone while you're at work and you feel like it the whole arduous process will never end and you desperately need moral support because you can't tell anymore whether, after four days of this insanity, whether it is actual meowing you hear or whether it's now just all in your head and you maybe never even owned cats to begin with, maybe you're in an asylum somewhere and this is just a horrible fever dream. Because that was me last night, friend. I've been there. I have three cats-- two four year olds from the same litter that I've had since they were weaned, and a former stray cat who is about ten or so. I've had the former stray for five or six years. All are spayed females. The older cat and the more boisterous of the two younger cats have never had the best relationship, as the younger one bugs the older one a little too much and they both want to be the dominant ones. The younger boisterous one had a two night stay at the vet's last week and came home smelling and acting different, so unsurprisingly I'm dealing with some non-recognition aggression. I've tried putting them all together (seemed to work at first, but the older one got really scared by some unknown thing and I had to separate them), and now they're in separate parts of the apartment, separated but with their food on either side of my bedroom door. The vet/foreign smells seem to not be an issue anymore, as the older cat (who is the angriest by far) can smell the younger one on me, or near the door, or she can hear her meow and it just isn't a big deal. I did the towel trick and the vanilla trick, and no one seems to care about scents anymore at all. Only when the older cat sees the young one does she get really upset and start hissing and growling and sometimes yowling. I'm doing the thing where you open the door an inch or so while they're eating, and give them their favorite treats when they can see each other to reinforce the positives. It doesn't seem to be progressing that much, but I could be biased since I haven't really slept for the last few nights because when I'm with the older cat, the younger ones cry and want me to come back over to their side. When I go to their side, the older cat cries till I come back to her. Not my most favorite week ever. I live in an apartment and don't want to drive my neighbors nuts with the constant meowing, so I even went so far as to sleep in the hall next to my bedroom door so I could easily switch between rooms and I could try to calm down whoever was crying by singing soft songs about them and whispering to them. They love that, so it sometimes makes them cry a little softer or scratch less, this I don't have to go back and forth as often. I'm trying to rationalize this here, but obviously, cat people like me are nuts enough to do this crap. No excuse really. We're nuts. I asked a bunch of my friends (all multiple cat households) what I could do that I haven't tried yet. A few suggested the calming spray, which I had dismissed as snake oil the first time I saw it. "How gullible would you have to be to buy THAT," I thought. But friends I trusted who are parents to very nervous cats swear by it, and I figured I had nothing to lose but ten bucks. I'm feeling pretty desperate and want this process sped up. I love my cats so much, but this reintegration is a little high maintenance for me. Singing songs to them is crazy enough but sleeping on the floor in the hallway while they scale me like a mountain and scream from the top of my butt is not how I envisioned my adult life to be. Help. Today I had a friend get some spray on his way home and drop it off. I sprayed it all around the area with the two younger cats first. It could have been my imagination, but the boisterous young one seemed to get kind of sleepy. Not like she would be if she were sedated, because she was still alert and responsive like normal, but she seemed a lot less on edge. Could have been my imagination though. The other younger one, who I haven't really mentioned since she's not really part of the conflict, she suddenly got really frisky and her tail puffed up and she zoomed around. Not like anything was wrong or like she was scared, just like she was really really excited. Like if I'd come home from a long weekend away and it was time to catch up on snuggles and treats. But, also, could have been a coincidence or my imagination. This was around 5pm today. When I was sure the younger cats weren't going to die or have any weird reactions from the spray, I moved to the quarantine area in the back where the older cat is. I sprayed it everywhere in there while she yelled at me about how I should really just get rid of the other cats. Seemed like nothing happened. Then she got kind of calm like the boisterous cat had. So I decided to do the thing where I open the door an inch or two so they can see each other while I give them treats. The older cat hissed and grumbled a little, but not like before. The younger cats used to try to charge the door because they miss their grumpy friend, but instead they just sat there, kind of staring, but not in the threatening manner cats can stare with. Just calmly and happily watching. The older cat also sat there, kind of mesmerized. Eventually they all got bored and walked away. I went ahead and closed the door, even though I was amazed at the changes. I decided that these changes couldn't all be coincidences. The calming spray had to be doing something, and for it to work on all three of my cats it had to have been made by a very talented sorcerer and subsequently blessed by a shaman before being out in the Amazon warehouse. Or maybe they have shamans in-house, I don't know. All evening, all three cats have been themselves, but much more relaxed. The younger ones took naps on the couch next to me while I watched some horrible TV, and I haven't seen them sleep so deeply in weeks. They were so relaxed, but when I woke them up to make sure they were ok, they were completely themselves. Not like they were drugged, just like they trusted me and everything around them. I came in to see how the older cat was dong at about 10:30 pm. I heard her doing the soft meows she does when she gets lonely, but nothing like the manic, worried crying and door scratching she had been doing when I wasn't with her the last few days. When I came in she wasn't nervous or jittery or grumpy at all. She was excited to see me and chirped a whole bunch, she ran around like she did when she was younger, and she snuggled with me like she has never snuggled before. Then she just fell asleep, and even if there is a noise from outside or whatever, she looks up just enough to make sure it's not some really extremely interesting bird or something, and just goes back to sleep. And it's a happy, restful sleep. In conclusion, I still am not ready to put all the cats together in one room, but I feel like it'll happen much sooner than it would have without the spray. Everyone has really mellowed out in their separate areas and I no longer have to run back and forth whenever the other side gets lonely. They are still themselves, alert, and with the same personalities, but they all seem much happier, less stressed, and b
