Hi all. Am looking for a bit of help and reassurance with introducing two adult cats to each other. We adopted a stray male cat “Banoffee” who kept visiting us for food - he’s now neutered and chipped and doing really well with us. But introductions with our other cat Lola are rather up and down. Although we read quite a lot beforehand it has been much harder than anticipated. Think we were naive in thinking because Lola had always enjoyed living with other cats before and already knew Banoffee’s scent from him sneaking in it wouldn’t be too hard! But it has not been easy! We have been going very slowly with these introductions (it’s now been 2.5 months since we adopted Banoffee) and we are still at the stage of viewings either side of the pet gate. Some days these go well, with them touching noses either side of the gate and eating close up together. Other days, Banoffee is a bit boisterous (e.g. pawing at Lola - could be attempting to play but hard to know) and Lola hisses at him. We’ve tried a few interactions without the gate in the last few weeks but these haven’t gone well so far - Lola always hisses at him and sometimes he has run at her. He does usually seem to back off when she hisses (except one time when he stole her treats - he is very food driven having been a stray). Where should we go from here? Should we stop ungated interactions for now and wait until we have consistent no hissing either side of the gate for a couple of weeks? Have also been trying to increase the amount of time they see each other for either side of the gate. Is there still hope that we can get this to work between them?! We really don’t want to have to rehome Banoffee - he’s a lovely boy and deserves some stability after his stray past! But also love Lola dearly and don’t want her to be unhappy. Thank you!