Hoping for advice/encouragement on cat introductions!

Hi everyone,

We’ve been working on introducing our two cats for almost 3 months and they are still not able to be in a room together for longer than 15 minutes without getting into a tussle.

For some background: We adopted our first cat Fizzy in February of this year. She‘s about 3 years old and was abandoned by her previous owners before coming into the care of the rescue we worked with. We assumed she would be sociable with other cats since we met her at our local cat cafe (where she was living with about 20 other kitties). Fizzy is extremely food motivated and this has been a major factor in our introduction process. We grabbed our 2nd cat Mulberry off the streets near the end of June with the assumption that she had a home to return to. The cat distribution system works in mysterious ways and we have now taken her in as our own. We believe she is just under a year old but we have no information on her background since she had no microchip or other form of ID. She is extremely friendly and cuddly towards people but was initially very wary and fearful of our older cat.

Our introduction process so far:
We did a lot of research and have been going VERY slowly with this process. Since we have two floors in our apartment with a door in between we have been keeping them completely separate with plenty of space for each of them. We’ve also put pheromone diffusers in each of their spaces. We have done recommended introduction steps in this order: scent swapping, site swapping, contact through doors, visual contact through a baby gate, small sessions with one cat in a play tent, and very small play sessions loose in the same room with separate treats afterwards. Mealtimes near each other has not been an option due to the older cat’s food obsession.

We have moved on to a stage where they can be in the same room together for small amounts of time and even share a tube treat without any fuss. The problem now is that any time Mulberry moves out of sight, uses the scratching posts, or receives play time on her own Fizzy will get defensive and pounce. She will grab Mulberry by the neck, swat at her from above, or bite at her tail/butt area. This behavior has not been received well by Mulberry, who tends to fight back or retreat and end up getting chased. During these sessions we do our best to reward them with treats when they ignore each other but after a while it seems like all they can focus on is each other and cannot be redirected. We try to separate them whenever there’s any sign of an oncoming tussle but sometimes we can’t react fast enough and they end up in a wrestling sesh. Separating them when this happens has been pretty easy and they both calm down very quickly after these fights. We feel hopeful they can coexist since neither cat seems distressed or fearful until the moments when these fights occur.

We have made a lot of progress but we’re starting to feel a bit downtrodden and are unsure of where to go from here. The right answer may just be more patience, but I would love any encouragement or further tips that anyone has for us! Thanks so much.