Violent, freaking out cat.

[Kflowers]

Wow! letting you cut his claws is amazing! I'd take that to mean he trusts you to protect him if anything goes wrong.
I'd also take his relaxing around you and the others to mean that he -- and you-- believe your mother is getting better and those fears you pushed down deep are now resolved. You are right, doctors tend to think your abdomen recovers faster than it does. Best to keep him with you now that he's accepted you and let her have several extra weeks to be completely healed so she can have a safe lap and neither of them will get hurt or frightened. (Don't forget in life with a cat there is a lot, a LOT, of bending over and I expect she won't be supposed to do that for awhile. You might get her a grabber stick from Amazon to pick up stuff she dropped. They make a big difference in healing and getting stuff off the floor, even if your knees are working well.) HUGS to all of you.

 

[syzygycat]

update, 3 days later. Still moving through the acclimating process. He's got access to entire top floor of the house. He's not aggressive at all towards us. But he only leaves his room for under a minute (with or without other cats on the top floor) . He stays in his room if no one is around he will hang out a couple of feet out of the room, not more.

When other cats are allowed up, they just stare at each other (i can distract my cats with toys/lasers/treats not him).

Occasional, not loud, growling but no red flags so I took down the divider all together. I pulled as much furniture as I can away from the walls and stacked pillows in the middle of every room so no one can get cornered.


These 2 in particular just stare at each other for hours straight...

(pic from when divider was still up).

He just stays at least 5 feet away from the other cats, but they're staying poker faced. Can't they'll if either is angry, scared, just curious, or relaxed.

I've "acclimated" 7 new cats over the years.
5 times someone has an aggressive response at some point and we seperate go back a few steps, give it a couple of days then more slowly restart the process.
2 times the new cat was playful and everyone was accepting really quickly and the cats were allowed to commingle within a week.
This is the 1st time it's been so neutral, I can't guess what's going to happen when they actually get within swatting range.

(Bridget, my orange cat, is the same age as mom's cat. They were adopted together from the same cage shelter. They've spooked each other twice so far, both bolting full speed in opposite directions).

He's substantial bigger than my cats. I hope he doesn't figure that out.