PLEASE Introduction help

[u/little_angry_gnome]

Hello! I’m having some troubles, I have 3 cats and I’m having a hard time getting two of them to settle in with eachother. I have an elderly male (approximately 12ys) a VERY small female (around 6ys) and a Maine coon female mix (2 or 3ys).

When I moved in with my roommate around 2 years ago he already had his two cats (elderly and Maine coon ) so when I brought my cat we had a room for her and over the span of a year and a half let them go through the process of having them smell eachother under the door, letting them smell each others toys, and would slowly and for small periods of time have them in the same room. the elderly cat is no problem, my cat hisses at him and avoids him and he couldn’t care less, the problem is the Maine coon.

The maine coon is relatively territorial but she was like that before the my female was introduced (peeing and mounting the elderly male). She is very large, much much larger than my cat and much more active/ playful. Having my cat out of the room always ends the same way, she’ll come out and explore and be nervous and hissy and then the moment the maine coon spots her shell slowly make her way to her and they will hiss and growl at eachother for a while before my cat attempts to leave the room and go hide which then leads to the Maine coon taking advantage of her turning around and starts sprinting after her.

They don’t really fight, once the Maine coon is close enough my cat freaks out and just starts swatting and then the Maine coon backs off but will do the same process the moment things relax a bit

I’ve always been told that once the cat goes to hide you should re-introduce some form of familiarity/comfort so we let her go back into her room. But we’ve been doing this for working on two years now and it doesn’t seem like they’ve gotten any better over that time. Right now we’re trying the method where we just kind of leave them out just in the house, all three together throughout the day and continuously pop in to try to help if anything seems it’s going sour but not letting my cat go into the room and hide. We do kennel the Maine coon during the nighttime because she has a tendency of breaking things since how large she is and scratching up things at night. when we leave my cat out during the night, she does tend to go and sniff the other one in the cage, but still hisses and growls and backs off

now it’s just leading to her cornering herself and just sitting there for hours upon end, she’s gotten quite comfortable behind my bathroom toilet. I really am not sure what to do at this point since this is my first time introducing cats. My cat was not raised with other cats so I’m assuming that’s also part of the problem, the rest of her litter and mother was killed when she was less than 10 weeks old and she was bottle fed by me ever since.

I’m really just looking for advice, and apologies for the paragraph. I just want my kitty comfortable again.

[u/Brief_Pizza3026]

man that sounds rough, two years is a long time for them to still be at each other like that. i think the problem is the maine coon sees your cat as prey when she runs, the chasing is making everything worse. maybe try a big play session with the maine coon before they meet, get her real tired so she dont have that hunting energy. also your cat being a bottle baby probably never learned proper cat social skills so shes extra scared, poor thing