GRcade

Hey!

After a year of sharing a house with a cat, the girlfriend has decided that this is not enough cat, so we are adding another to the mix. I hear that cats are not always happy to have another in their presence & wondered if anyone here has any similar experiences or advice on how to help them get along?

The second cat is a rescue cat from a 22 cat household, first is a cat we got from friends who had 3 and one took offense to ours and started charging at her. She is very well mannered, a sweet fluffy bundle, so in theory they should get along, but she gets mad at other cats entering her garden, so not sure how this will go...

The first cat will probably hate the second cat for a while. I imagine the second cat will be fine if its from a crazy cat lady house.

Eventually the first cat should settle down, but it may make itself more scarce for a few weeks.

They'll work it out

Having smelt the pong from our cat's litter tray because she happens to have just laid a cable while I'm nearby, I can only imagine the ungodly stench from a twenty-two cat household

I think what you do is lock the new cat in one room of the house until the old cat gets used to the smell, then they can mix together. They might still hate each other, mind!

Borrow a dog for a weekend. A common enemy will help them bond.

Dowbocop wrote:Having smelt the pong from our cat's litter tray because she happens to have just laid a cable while I'm nearby, I can only imagine the ungodly stench from a twenty-two cat household

I think what you do is lock the new cat in one room of the house until the old cat gets used to the smell, then they can mix together. They might still hate each other, mind!

Our spaghetti waits till I’m in the shower. Her box is next to the bath. It’s strawberry floating rotten.

Curls wrote:The first cat will probably hate the second cat for a while. I imagine the second cat will be fine if its from a crazy cat lady house.

Eventually the first cat should settle down, but it may make itself more scarce for a few weeks.

They may divide the home into different territories. Growing up, our tabby Mortimer lorded over the upstairs, while the downstairs was generally ruled by blue GC.

It'll work out, get a felaway plugin as it will help sooth them and odds are by the time it runs out they will be buddies.

We have 3 cats all gotten a year or so apart and all get on fine, they were all kittens mind but still.

It's best to keep them apart to begin with, these things take time and a gradual introduction works far better than just throwing them together and expecting them to get along.

Asked the wife (vet nurse)

She said the separate room thing isn't a great way in her opinion.

If you manage said get a felaway before you be the new one and have it in a few days to chill down the existing cat and if possible get a blanket or whatever the new cat has used and put it into he house, the existing cat will get used to the smell and will be more accepting of the new one when it arrives as it knows the smell and the felaway is calming him.

We tried the Feliway to introduce our female stray to our two existing male cats but it seemed to do more harm than good (the two boys went back to territorially spraying in certain rooms ).

At the moment they still sleep in separate rooms but they all roam the house together and ocassionally settle in the same room. We feed them all in the kitchen at the same time so they can see that the other cats aren't a threat to them in that way. The new cat has started hissing a *lot* less at the two existing cats, but it's a long process to get them all integrated.

Yeah, we tend to keep ours apart for at least a week, sometimes longer so they can get used to the smell of a new cat in the house. Then introduce them gradually.

you should make them fight to the death; the winner is obviously the superior cat and deserves its home

The first few days they will probably hate each other and then after that get along fine, I have 8 Bengals and 6 of them I purchased in pairs and even they fell out when I first got them home but they all soon sorted out their differences and although they hissed and swiped at each other none of them have ever injured each other, all mine have been kittens so obviously it may be a completely different situation with adult cats that may not have lived with other cats before

Official pet thread here:
t:the-pet-discussion-thread?f=7

Meep wrote:Official pet thread here:
t:the-pet-discussion-thread?f=7

It's fine having new threads man

Thanks guys. I have heard of the felaway plugin but we were going to see how they reacted to each other before a purchase, perhaps we should have sorted it sooner. I have heard about gradual introductions, so my gaming room is now a cat nursery too.

Are we likely to know straight away if they get on? As in, if they are fine when introduced are they likely to stay that way, or should we still be cautious?

They won't be fine when first introduced, they're cats. The best you can hope for initially is no out and out hostility.

When I was much younger we had 2 cats, brother and sister. I found that if you picked them up by their tail, they would not be very happy and swipe at you with their claws. Picking both up like this didn't make them swipe at each other as I'd planned.

Hope this helps.

Ask my auntie, the fool started feeding feral cats in the countryside, now she has 72.