[Grendel]

This might be long, so sorry about that. I will start with a timeline.

2009: Christmas, and my nephew took in a cat that he couldn't keep. The original owners were going to dump it on Halloween '09, so he took it in(damn him he is just like me). He told us about it so we took the cat. At the time we had two very elderly dogs.

2010: The cat avoided the dogs, but both dogs passed between January and April. In July we adopted a new dog(best dog ever). They didn't like each other but they tolerated each other.

2011: In June starved young cat shows up on our property and my wife feeds him....
We take him in, and take him to the vet(checked for microchip and got some advice). The vet wants a lot of money to check him out and we just spent $1000+ on our adopted dog for medical problems. They said they understood and told us to isolate the new cat until we could afford the checkup and vaccines. Got all of that handled now but we decided to let new cat explore the house for a day and we didn't know how old cat would react. We isolated the old cat for a day and let new cat out to explore. All went well so last weekend we let everybody out. Old cat did ok... until he saw new cat's back turned. He attack new cat really bad, drew blood, and bit or scratched his face. He also attacked dog, who was doing nothing. Needless to say old cat is now isolated. New cat and dog love each other. We have to get rid of old cat, and I feel horrible. Dog is really happy and more playful since old cat is locked in a room, and that tells me he has been attacked a lot before.

I have emailed a rescue, but cats are hard to adopt(apparently black cats are harder and that is what he is). and I just feel bad about the whole deal.

Any advice? Are we doing the right thing?