Reality TV Stars?

Below-- our application to appear on Animal Planet's "My Cat From Hell".

Meet Cessy, the Feline Formerly Known As Princess. 6 months ago, in January, Cessy joined our family. She was an out-of-luck shelter cat on death row. The shelter she was in was being forced to stop sheltering cats and, since they believed her to be 12 years old and she had already been in the shelter for 3 years, Princess was slated to be put down. Despite already having a toddler (then 2  1/2... now just a few weeks shy of 3), as well as 3 other cats (Lois, Klakky and Mishi), her story touched us and we drove an hour, in the snow, to pick her up and bring her home. We were promised a sweet, docile, elderly couch-lump and we almost felt more like we were signing up to provide retirement home care.

Well.... she is sweet. She's not 12 (closer to 8, according to our vet). She's not docile--she LOVES her humans but immediately went all "Single White Female" on Lois- more on that later. And she's only a couch lump to the extent that any cat is a couch lump. Cessy is an avid and vicious toy-mousie huntress and she starts most mornings with a rapid fire, up and down the stairs, across the living room, up the wall, through the house burst of calisthenics. She would like to be a lap cat, but tensions around here generally run too high now for her to relax that much.

Before we took Cessy in we had minimal cat problems. They weren't great sleepers. They knocked stuff down in the middle of the night. Mishi has a particular vendetta against water glasses. Lois will make sure we have NOTHING (and I mean NOTHING) on our dresser at 2 AM. Klakky appears to have sudden flashbacks to her days in 'Nam at all odd hours. But otherwise, fine. They're cats.

Lois was the first cat we got. She's currently about 9 and we got her from a shelter when she was an older kitten/young cat. She had a cold the day we picked her up, and the stitching on her spay job had been botched. She was the last of her littler and we took her home to our 700 square foot apartment. She was never a good sleeper and locking her out of the bedroom did little-- she'd cry and scratch at the door. Eventually she settled in, but she never seemed "quite right". If she was a child, we suspect  she would be labeled with high functioning autism and given a 1:1 para (Julie and I are both teachers). Lois often gets lost in her own house, forgets what she was doing and gives you the most awesome blank stare. She also has some of the best survival instincts of our cats-- she knows instinctually when the heaters go on and where to curl up by them, if someone is cooking a steak, tuna or chicken and where we have hidden the latest shipment of dry cat food. She is usually very friendly with other cats. She will sit at our back door and make eyes at the local strays (who come up to the door and make eyes at her) where the other cats puff their tails and hiss. Lois is a rather long haired Tuxedo cat. She's rather overweight.

Then we moved to a 2 bedroom condo and took in Klakky. Klakky was Julie's cousin's cat- also a shelter cat. Klakky had lived with Julie's cousin, Eddie, and had a litter-mate sibling named Tangerine. Sadly, Eddie discovered that he was very allergic to cats and, after trying for awhile to live with it, returned Klakky and Tangerine to the shelter. Tangerine never transitioned back into the shelter and went on hunger strike-- he died not long after being sent back. He also had cancer. Klakky then became depressed at the shelter and also refused food. The shelter contacted Eddie and he took Klakky back and we agreed to take her from him as son as we could. Klakky is a "senior" cat in the realm of 11. She's pretty spry and is generally "top cat," but never really uses her authority. Klakky is a nearly-toothless tortie. She's also kind of overweight.

Mishi is the baby. Well, the feline baby. 3 days into my pregnancy, we were at a Farmer's Market and there were teenagers with a laundry basket full of kittens. I fell in love with the the little calico and took her home. She went into heat just a few days after we got her home and was then properly fixed. Mishi is a little ball buster who still nurses off her forearm (her mother was hit by a car and one of her siblings was eaten by a dog), tries to spoon with you at night, bats at your face all night long and sometimes annoys her older sisters. She gets violently angry with the other two cats whenever they have been taken to the vet and is big into hissing. She is also very sweet, but still all kitten. Mishi will be 4 this summer and is still a big kitten in a lot of ways. She's a calico/tortie and very small for a full grown cat. She's pretty average weight.

Though she's not a cat, I'll give some background on Mickey, our toddler, too. She thinks she's a cat. Cat was her first word. When she gets really angry, she hisses. Mickey is amazing with the cats- for a toddler. She loves them, and they love her. Mishi sleeps in her room often, and we call Klakky the "Nanny Cat". Klakky will go into Mickey's room and calm her down when she won't go to sleep at night. Klakky will let Mickey pet her head and ears until she falls asleep, and then will curl up next to Mickey on her pillow. In fact, Klakky loves Mickey so much that she sometimes wakes her up in the middle of the night with excessive love (we had to lock her out of the room for awhile). Mickey loves her kitties a lot and talks about them all the time. She knows how to be gentle (before we got Cessy, the house rule was pretty much that if Mickey got scratched, SHE got a time out, because she must have been too rough- our cats are extremely gentle with her and patient) and very rarely gets over excited or aggressive with them. The cats have many high-up places to hide, and she knows she can't climb up after them. Getting their bowls for feeding them, brushing them, giving them treats... she helps care for them. The only cat who scratches her is Cessy. Much of the time Cessy tolerates some gentle love from Mickey before just waking away. But, if we're within an hour of feeding time, and Mickey happens to walk by her, Cessy will reach out and scratch her. Just, it seems, to drive home the point that she's hungry. Right now Mickey has healing scratches on her arms and legs for merely walking by. She has learned that Cessy is a "no petting kitty" and shies away from her now. She calls her "The Scratching Kitty" and has even learned to yell at her, "No Aggressing on Lois!"

So on to our current problems.

We brought Cessy home and introduced her slowly to the house and the other cats. She spent her first few days completely confined to an upstairs bathroom. Not terribly spacious, but much better than the small cage she lived in. We swapped scents with the other cats (blankets, toys, towels) and our veteran cats were pretty used to this situation. We started giving the girls treats on opposite sides of the doors. We let Cessy explore the upstairs a little bit when we knew that everyone else was downstairs. A few small interactions... some line of sight... we pretty much did it the introduction slowly over the course of a month. For quite awhile we would let Cessy have the run of the house all day until we left, and then lock her up, (with food, water and litter) in the master bedroom/bathroom suite. Klakky and Lois, initially, seemed to accept her, and Mishi just couldn't handle it. She would hiss angrily at Cessy every time she walked by or looked in her direction. We figured it was a "pecking order" thing and tried to help ease it, in addition to giving it time and extra supervision. While Mishi was constantly informing Cessy, "I HATE YOU", Cessy was quietly trying to drive Lois out. It started very quietly, but we noticed that Cessy was slowly taking over every spot in the house that Lois liked. Then she started stalking Lois around the house. Trapping her in corners and in the littler box (we have two boxes. Despite the second one being available, no cat really uses it. They actually wait in line for the same box. We have tried to encourage them to use the second box, but they don't want to. We have even tried other kinds of boxes, but no luck), stealing her favorite window perch, then her favorite chair. Lois in non-confrontational, so she would just run away. Eventually she stopped going upstairs at all and began spending her entire days in a single chair- leaving only to drink, eat and use the litter box.

Then she stopped eating entirely and that is unlike Lois. And having terrible diarrhea several times a day.   We took her to the vet and they said she was fine. Give it a week. A week turned into 2. We could get her to eat more, but she was still having diarrhea. Lois is such a creature of habit that, when we changed her food, she wouldn't eat it. A lot of experimentation finally found a food that she would try and the diarrhea stopped. The vet thinks that the stress from Cessy triggered an allergy to her usual food.

Lois is not free to move around the house at all. None of the cats gets along with Cessy. Mishi jumps to Lois's defense and has been involved in several violent altercations with Cessy on Lois's behalf (recently she tore Cessy's ear and I didn't realize it. We separated the cats and locked Cessy in a bathroom, only to come back and find every ear-level surface in the bathroom streaked with blood.) Lois just tries to run away and hide. She has begun living on top of the kitchen cabinets, but two nights ago Cessy discovered that she could get up there and we had to get up 5 separate times to try and get her down (Lois would start hissing loudly, Cessy would growl and scream, we'd come running with a spray bottle, aiming 3 feet over our heads-- if a brawl happens up there, I have no idea how anyone would get down. Cessy blocks the only means of egress). We have started having to lock Cessy up again when we leave the house and overnight. Klakky doesn't like her, but they haven't had any run-ins either. No one messes with the Klakk.

What makes this odd is that they can all eat together-- within inches, if necessary. Sometimes they can play in the same vicinity (they all love the laser pointer and will play within feet of one another, but not with each other). (In the pictures below, taken while I'm typing this, you can see all 4 cats. Lois is on top of the fridge. Mishi is standing in the kitchen. Cessy is lying on the floor, close to the kitchen entryway, Klakky is off to the side, on her back. Note that Cessy and Lois are facing each other and staring at each other. In the second picture, our toddler has joined them and Mishi has walked from the kitchen into the living room.) It will seem like things are getting better for a day or so, and then there will be an all out attack or Cessy will find a new way to corner Lois and it will get worse in a whole new way. We're teachers and have lots of plans for the summer, but we have no idea how we can possibly leave the house for a week at a time. We fear that, without monitoring (I work from home right now, so I can keep an eye on things), Lois will be bullied beyond what she can handle. While a good friend has pet-sat in the past, we're at the point where we don't think that twice a day visits will do it and we can't afford to pay someone to stay here while we're gone. We don't think that locking Cessy in one room for a week is right either, as it stresses the other cats out when she is locked up and they spend their time outside the door where she is locked. Lois doesn't seem able to defend herself, Mishi is overzealous in her defense of Lois and Klakky just can't be bothered to get involved.

6 months in and we have tried desperately to find a new home for Cessy, but, because we suspect she needs to be an "only cat" we can't find anyone who loves cats enough (and doesn't already have several) to take her. Cessy is a lovely cat with humans. Everyone who comes to visit gets ample love from her, but she is making life miserable for us and for her feline sisters. We worry that, by saving her life, we have ruined Lois's, and Lois is the cat that we have had the longest. We have consulted with "cat therapist" over the phone, advertised her story on social media and hit up everyone we can think of who would like a cat. We have tried positive reinforcement and timeouts. We have tried to up the amount of playtime, but Cessy will break up the game by attacking the other cats instead of the toy (Mishi, Lois and Klakky might be tag teaming a red dot, and Cessy will walk up to Lois and hit her, and then Mishi will attack Cessy and Lois will go hide on top of the fridge). We are starting to fear that returning her to the shelter is our only option. It would break our hearts- and we'd pick a no-kill shelter- but we're out of ideas. Help!!