It is so, so strange. Yesterday they were best mates, playing and chasing each other and now they are so distant.
She has been hiding behind toilets, under beds, behind sofas - she never does this. If anything, she is normally the one winding Maxi up and sometimes he wanders off for a bit of calm and quiet.
She was still hissing at him this morning but hiding less - she came out for food when it was put out but didn't manage to eat anything.
Maxi has approached her and then lay down next to her, as if to ask her to play but she's having none of it. She's so rigid and when you pick her up she just curls up in a ball.
I've left them alone this morning, but opened the spare bedroom door as sometimes she likes to sleep under that bed to give her a bit of privacy.
Going to order some of that Feliway stuff too - lots of people, including a work colleague, have good things to say about it.
Mad how their sense of smell seems to be more important to them than sight.
Thanks for all the advice.
Looks like the two of them are beginning to recover. I think you have taken some excellent steps to help them.
You are quite right that smell is so much more important to cats - at least, for relationships and territory. This is what has probably done the spooking. What
looked familiar now
smells completely wrong - and it's in my patch!!! Maxi was probably stressed from the vet visit as well, so would have been exuding the smell of that stress. So Millie is thinking, "everyone's panicking, why, why, can't see anything?!" With you getting a bit anxious too, she took the right option which is to distrust everything until the world goes back to normal.
Giving her space and her favourite retreat is good. Feliway works for some cats, like catnip works only on some cats. It can't hurt though.
It may take a few hours or a few days until she overcomes the shock of her world having been wobbled. It's rare, but sometimes they never get back to the same connection. If you stroke both often and one after the other, you'll get the 'smell balance' back and reassure both that it's still the same home.
Cats are creatures of habit - they really don't like change!