New cat meets old cat = fighting

Question
Hi! Recently I moved, with my 3,5 year old neutered male cat Gabi, to my boyfriends house. He has a 12 year old spayed female cat. We did the whole meet and greet by the book, kept them separated, they were able to smell each other, see each other, we changed their locations, allowing them two weeks to get acquainted to each other before they met. We introduce them a bit at the time and when they started fighting we brought them a step back.
The problem is, they still fight. The female cat is usually very territorial to other cats, like when they come to her garden, she chases them off everytime and is quite dominant. With my cat she just stays all the time on her chair and does not move. That is one thing that is worrying me, the fact that if Gabi is down from his room she will sit all day and won't move.
The main problem is that Gabi is constantly going to her, sometimes like he is hunting her, some times out of sheer curiosity. He tries to jump on her chair and when he does all hell brakes lose. They fight. I do't think that they bite, but they use their paws. She hisses at him prior to that but he just does not seem to care.
We took care that he did not go on her chair, we sprayed him with water, but sometimes it is matter of just turning your back on him.
The other problem is that if she does decide to move, hi is instantly crouched in his "hunting" position stalking her...

Will this just stop one day and we have to be patient? Is there anything we can do? I only use water to divert him from stalking her and it works for a bit, and for a cat he is pretty obedient, when I say "No" he does stop what he is doing...
Should we just let them fight it out? He is about twice his size, but for now he is the only one that had scratches on his nose.

Thank you for your help!

Gabriella


Answer
Hi
Cats will always carry this sort of behavior out but it is not necessarily aggression but play. yes it can look very nasty and they can hiss and growl sometimes but this is all normal cat behavior.

Cats are not natural pack animals and are as you know very territorial but they can learn to get along by just giving each other space with just the occasional spat.

However it could be play. the whole hunched down hunting stance is play. A cat that is aggressive will just go for them and not go through the whole hunting pose.

I have two cats who are brothers. Most of the time they keep far apart and dont interact at all. One of the cats is top dog as it were and they eat first while the other waits his turn. however they do also play fight which can look terrible. biting, rolling around occasional growl or hiss but it is all play and in most cases will not result in any harm.

there is not much you can do about this but let them get on with it. they will sort out there own differences in their own way if need be. it could simply be that one cat is trying to assert their authority on the home, again this is normal and will sort itself out.

It sounds like you did the whole introduction process well. You could try going through it again as this can sometimes help build bonds. Did you do the carry case introduction?See this page for more on this

/introducing-cats.html

Hope things calm down soon

best wishes Kate