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First of all, I just want to say that English isn’t my first language, so I’m sorry if anything is hard to understand.

My boyfriend and I started living together about a year ago. At first, we were in a small apartment with his two cats (a 4–5-year-old male and a 1.5-year-old female) and my two cats (both female, 3 and 4 years old). In the beginning, they all hated each other, but after about two months they actually started getting along—they even slept together, and we had no problems.

About six months ago, we moved to a bigger apartment. At first, everything seemed fine and the cats looked happy with the extra space. But then his male cat (Emi) started attacking my younger cat (Morita). She has dwarfism, so she can’t really defend herself very well. At the beginning, we thought maybe he was just playing too rough, but it’s gotten more and more aggressive, and now they fight like feral cats.

We also noticed that he started losing hair on his legs and arms. We thought it might be stress from the move, so we went to the vet and got some calming hormones for the cats, and it actually seemed to help at first—his fur got better. But then I started noticing other changes.

My cat has always been very calm and used to living with older cats, but now she hisses at the others and sometimes even attacks them when they’re not doing anything. She’s also become really attached to me—she follows me all day and insists on sleeping with me, which she didn’t do before all this started.

The weird thing is that they’re not fighting all the time—it’s not like they completely hate each other.

I feel really sad because they all used to get along so well. My boyfriend thinks it might be because he’s not playing enough with his cat. I think it could be because his cat used to go outside, and now he’s stuck inside the apartment. But honestly, I don’t know what to do.