June 2008 Weddings
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Cat Ladies

For those of you with more than one cat, how did you introduce the new one into the house? I posted a few months ago about the stray little kitty that was hanging around my house and he still is. At this point, he's purring and letting me pet him, pick him up, etc. I really want to take him in, but my cat is pretty aggressive. Any ideas of how we could possibly bring him into the house slowly to ease them both into the situation?

Of course, if we decide to do this, we'll be getting the little one completely checked out by a vet before letting him have any contact with our current cat.

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Re: Cat Ladies

  • What we did was we introduced our cat with our new one using the pet carrier. After our one cat died from cancer we decided to adopt two kitties. Someone gave us one outside of PetSmart, we had her for a few days before we adopted our male kitty from the shelter. We just kept him inside his pet carrier and let her come over and sniff it, so she should would get use to his scent. We had an empty bedroom so he stayed in there until all his tests at the vet came back negative, then we would leave him out with her and she would hiss, growl, and smack on the head lol. After a month or two they became best buds. Now that they are 3 yrs old he is the aggressive one, he wants to play all the time, he tries to rough house with her and she wants no part of it lol.
  • We have 3 and all were adopted separately. 

    Like you said, definitely have a vet look at your new kitty before bringing him into your home because you'll want to make sure he doesn't have anything communicable.  Also, clip both cat's claws if they have them.  (And on that note, I would encourage you to leave new kitty's claws intact for a while or permanently if it doesn't cause an issue in your home.  Since he's used to being an outdoor cat, he might insist on continuing that and he'll need them for defense or to get up a tree in case he is in danger.)

    From my understanding, the best way to do it is to keep the new cat in a separate room for a day or two and don't let them see one another at all.  Then on day two, swap new kitty's blanket and toys with alpha cat's blanket and toys so they get used to each others' scents.  On day 3, do an introduction with new kitty in a carrier so if there is aggression, nobody gets hurt. 

    Once you feel confident that there won't be serious aggression (a little head-whapping is normal like what Jill experienced), let them do a real face to face.  Make sure when you feed them, you do it with a decent amount of distance and always feed the more aggressive cat first. 

    For our first integration with cat A and cat B, it took a good 2-3 weeks for them to be satisfied with the arrangement and now they're great with one another.  By the time we brought in cat C, cat A was old and didn't care anymore and the introduction took less than two days.

    Good luck!  And kudos for giving a homeless animal a home. :)

    Married in 2008 - DD born in 2010 - EDD 6.15.2012!
  • Thanks, ladies! I'm probably going to grab him tomorrow morning and bring him to the animal rescue league to be checked out. At least if we do find that he's got something communicable, we can leave him there at the shelter where maybe they could find him a catless home. If things do work out, we'll definitely keep the claws intact. Our other cat has been an indoor cat all along, but we never got him declawed, so we wouldn't declaw this one either. Ideally, we'd want this one to become in idoor cat as well, so hopefully that won't be an issue.

    I'll keep you guys updated with how things go.

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