Seperation anxiety in cat if so what can I do to help him?

Pumpkinseeds

Most of you will know that we've recently been adopted by a 2 year old male cat that we had neutered a month or so ago. Since Monday of last week he's been staying in the house and he doesn't want to be out for more than a few minutes, which is fine. When he arrived he loved sleeping out in the sun and getting fresh air, but since he moved indoors he seems to have become very insecure. Somebody litter trained him at some point and he loves company and people, so I can only guess that he was abandoned and that maybe he's afraid I'll abandon him:(

I'm at home most of the day and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen with him, our other 2 cats don't really want him leaving the kitchen and Felix has gone for him a lot in the kitchen, so I'm having to monitor the situation. Over the past few days, every time I leave the room he's following me around crying at me. I'm happy for him to go anywhere he wants in the house but Felix goes mental if he sees him in the living room and he frankly, goes postal if he sees him upstairs.

We're playing with him daily and trying to build his confidence but it's gotten to a stage where I'm losing sleep having to come down during the night to either calm him down or stop Felix harassing him. Now all 3 of our cats are here to stay but, my Husband is stressed out and feels that we've taken on too much. That really doesn't matter as we're going to keep all 3 of them. We've got Feliway plug ins, we've got Felix on Zyklene, which isn't doing much at after the first few days.

Is there anything I can do to improve the situation for Toby and for all of us really?

ferretone

Take a deep breath, both of you, and calm down I've seen so many of your posts over the past couple of years, although I post so rarely myself, and know you're pretty cat-savvy, so I can hardly believe you don't know about the "six-week rule" of cat habituation :P

Basically, you are just going to have to wait it out for five more weeks until his new routine is settled. That isn't set in stone: some cats take a week or so longer or shorter than the average, but this is the general sort of time-frame you're looking at for a normal cat to accept a "new normal".

Do please leave him that before you drive yourselves nuts worrying or trying to find ways to "make it work". What I'm saying really is the basic answer is generally a bit of time with cats. Trying to rush things never works, and the time to start worrying is long after our human logic tells us it's not working :rolleyes:

Best of luck with them, and I just bet you if you leave enough time, and make yourselves quit worrying, it will work out fine. I've seen this time and time again

Edited to add: And I wouldn't bother bother coming down during the night to intervene between him and Felix either. That will probably only slow down the sorting-out process between the pair of them, tbh. Wear earplugs at night if necessary, but much as it may disturb you they actually need to sort out their issues undisturbed. It'll only only be spitting, yowling and posturing anyway, and frankly, it's stuff they need to do.