Liz Buchanan BVSc MRCVS
Keymaster
Hello there. Yes, there are many products - some of which have some good theory and even a little evidence behind them- to help cats feel calmer. Your vet might point you to a few. However, lets look at the bigger picture. Your male cat has been away from home, come back smelling 'foreign' and 'strange,' and having undergone huge hormonal changes. Cats tend to tolerate each other in a space rather than cooperate and colonies often have a delicate, complex balance. In a household of 10 cats that's 9 relationships that stand to be renegociated - and ones between the other cats, too. Maybe an order will restablish itself, territorial disputes will be solved and harmony will return but you can't count on this. Ten is a lot of cats to share a house. Resources such as litter trays (the reccommendation is one tray per cat, spread around different territories, with two spares), food and water, access routes to the outside and sometimes human relationships can be prized and therefore act as tension points. I would suggest that it may be the environment - not the cat - that needs to be changed in this scenario. So rather than - or perhaps in addition to - giving drugs or modifiers to the protagonist, it may be worthwhile talking to a vet who knows a lot about behaviour, in order to see whether changes can be made to the environment in order to reduce intercat tensions. However, it is also a completely valid and reasonable option - and one that often works better - to rehome the cat who doesn't fit into a colony, to an environment that they can cope with more easily.
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