Cat calming after herbal drops caused vomiting

Cat anxiety is real and genuinely underestimated — cats are masters at hiding stress, so by the time you're noticing something's wrong, it's often been building for a while. The most effective calming products tend to be pheromone-based, but placement and usage matter a lot. Before I point you anywhere, it helps to know: what's triggering the anxiety if you have a sense of it, what are you actually seeing in your cat's behaviour, and has something changed recently — new home, new pet, shift in routine? One short paragraph of context makes a big difference in pointing you to the right thing.

That reaction to the herbal drops makes sense to step away from entirely — valerian especially can cause GI upset in some cats, and if she's already stressed, adding nausea into the mix just compounds things. The vomiting is a clear signal her system didn't tolerate it. A new cat in the home is one of the most common anxiety triggers, and Javanese are particularly social and sensitive to household changes, so her response is textbook even if it's distressing. Can I ask — are they sharing the same space, or have you been keeping them separated? And is the excessive grooming patchy or generalised? That'll help me gauge how acute the anxiety is right now.

The patchy over-grooming on her belly and inner legs tells me she's at a chronic stress level, not just mildly unsettled — that pattern is psychogenic and means her nervous system is working overtime. Three months with little improvement despite a careful introduction suggests she needs more support than time alone will give her. Given your constraints — nothing oral, nothing strongly scented — I'd point you directly to the Feliway Classic Diffuser. It's the gold standard pheromone option: it mimics the natural facial pheromone cats deposit when they feel safe, it's completely odourless to humans and non-intrusive to cats, and it works through the room rather than anything applied to her. Crucially, it's been clinically studied specifically for multi-cat tension and inter-cat anxiety. You'd want to plug it in the room she retreats to most, not the shared boundary area — her safe zone first.

It has more independent clinical backing than most pet calming products — there are peer-reviewed studies specifically on inter-cat conflict and stress-related over-grooming where it showed measurable improvement. It's not magic and it won't resolve a botched introduction on its own, but as a background support layer while you continue the slow introduction process, it genuinely shifts the baseline. The key thing people get wrong is placement — most people plug it near the problem area, like the door where the cats interact, but it works better in her core safe space so she associates that territory with calm. Run it continuously for at least four weeks before judging it. The Feliway Classic Diffuser Starter Kit on Amazon UK comes with a 30-day refill included, which is exactly the right trial window.

Start with just the diffuser — layering multiple products at once means you won't know what's working, and her system has already had one bad reaction so less is more right now. If after four to six weeks the over-grooming hasn't reduced and the inter-cat tension is still high, the next conversation is worth having with your vet about whether a short course of medication alongside the pheromone support makes sense. But for now: Feliway Classic Diffuser Starter Kit, plugged into her retreat room, left on continuously. That's the right first move.