I have several problems. I don’t know what to do.

My two cats Maya and Danny (mother and son) were very close before this incident, had never seen another cat outside of each other (other than my brother’s cat who passed away recently and Maya’s other kittens a few years short of a decade ago) now have to suddenly get used to not only a new environment but a new cat. My grandmother passed and left us her dog and cat. The dog should be no issue, as he has always loved cats. Casper the cat, however, did not take to Maya on their first meeting like he did with the outdoor female torti whom passed 2 years ago that occaisionally visited inside. I was hoping that since Casper liked the old torti and often looked out the door for her after her passing that he would be more open to a new girl. My mother’s logic was that once Casper liked Maya we could bring in Danny, and once he saw her be friendly with Danny he would see Danny was ok. It would be so much simpler if we weren’t in the process of moving things into my grandmother’s house and leaving ours to rent out to my cousin and his family. They will be moving in sometime in November. Both my cousin and his fiancée’s daughter are allergic to cats. While our dogs and my stepfather still reside nextdoor, my mother, stepsister and I mostly stay at grandmother’s. I was spending about two hours each day to spend with the cats nextdoor, more if the six dogs in the house didn’t set off my anxiety as well as the loud music my stepfather occasionally plays. Having Asperger’s makes dealing with certain noises hard, so I would just go up there to feed and spend some time with my cats and leave. I felt very bad for not being able to tolerate it for Danny, who is very attached to me and doesn’t like for me to be away. Before the moving issue, I stayed in my room the majority of the time. Even then he would cry if I was out too long. It only got worse after mostly moving nextdoor. The dogs express their ideas of me being gone too vocally and over affectionately for my liking, so I avoid them the most I can unless they are calm. Poor Danny starts crying the moment I get in the door and eats up the attention I give him. While I would have liked to take the cats to visits next door to get acclimated, both my mother and I prefer it be done while she is home, and she currently has a work schedule that makes it difficult. Maya and Casper have only met once. I figure all this is going to change soon. A few days ago I noticed an infected looking yet fresh scrape on Maya’s chin and went to check it out. Feeling of it, the area around it was hard and very unusual. Mom got her a vet appointment to which she went to the day before yesterday. Let me first say that I love our vet… but his gut feeling was that she very likely has a malignant bone growth and that the scrape was caused by her clawing at it. After he put her under to do a biopsy, he said he was a little more hopeful as there was a lot of pus which could mean its a bad infection. Bad, but treatable. But its still at the unknown phase. He gave her a shot of something I don’t remember to help the infection and said if she didn’t improve within a few days he’d send off the biopsy. He suggested we keep her in a secure room at our new home with wet food and drink so that we could keep a close eye on her. She did nothing but stay under the bed that night, sleeping off the anesthetic. Danny spent his first day without his mother, and was truly alone for the first time. So my mother said we might as well bring him down and move them in now instead of later. That’s where things went wrong. In my haste to not get clawed, I put Danny in the cat carrier before realizing grandmother’s poodle had peed all inside it. There was no way this cat was going anywhere without a bath, he was SOAKED. He did surprisingly well for his first bath. As my mother doesn’t have the appropriate shampoo, she used children’s gentle formula shampoo and body wash. While he nolonger has bad dandruff and smells fabulous… Maya doesn’t think so. He, however, doesn’t understand why his mother growls and hisses at him for merely looking at her. He currently doesn’t seem to care that she’s been anywhere. He acts towards her normally. We didn’t deal with her behaving like this when he got fixed years ago or his subsequent trip back after his tom-parts got an infection so I assume its because of his new smell. She tolerates his presence, I have seen him as close as two feet away but she cannot stand him to look at her. I know cats see eye contact as territorial, but Maya has always been one to lovingly stare at me or him for times it borderlines on creepy. Perhaps her having been anesthetized and possibly in pain added to her knowledge that there IS a strange cat in the house somewhere is causing it to be worse. I just wish I had known about the possibility of this sooner. If Maya didn’t have an issue that needed to be watched, this wouldn’t have happened. If grandma’s poodle had been fixed and properly house trained and didn’t have a fixation on peeing on things this wouldn’t have happened. If my mother had made the logical decision to put the cat carrier where he couldn’t get to it…

I’m at a loss. I don’t want my previously happy cats who loved each other to be like this… I wish things weren’t so complicated… Any thoughts?