Help our cats become friends (or at least not murder eachother)

February 25, 2024 6:38 AM

We're in the process of introducing a new cat to our home. I've read up on all the steps to do this slowly and safely, but am looking for tips for our particular circumstances. Challenge level: one extremely shy cat, and a home layout that makes it difficult to do the "let them see eachother through a barrier" step.

The main difficulty is that the door separating them is at the bottom of a set of stairs. Resident Cat normally does not go down these stairs, so meeting naturally through a door is not happening. Also, we have to use these stairs to leave the house.

We tried putting up a gate at the door for a few days. Resident Cat glanced down curiously then carried on as normal while New Cat meowed continuously to be let up.

We then moved the gate to the top of the stairs. Unfortunately, since there's no doorframe, the gate wasn't secure and New Cat slipped through. Resident Cat hissed at him (as she couldn't safely run away) while he obliviously explored, so we took him back downstairs.

We reinforced the gate, but Resident Cat runs to our bedroom when we let New Cat come up the stairs. We've been closing the bedroom door and letting him explore when this happens.

Resident Cat: 14 year old female. It is normal for her to hide from anyone "new" (including people who have been coming over weekly for years). Lived with one other cat her entire life.

New Cat: 8 year old male, extremely social, has lived with other cats.

I'll add that we'd already been scent swapping, with no negative reactions from either.

I'm reluctant to leave Resident Cat in the bedroom for long since she doesn't have a litterbox in there and, besides, this is her house.

So: what do we do next? Should we move the gate back down? Leave it at the top of the stairs and hope Resident Cat eventually comes out? Do something else?

posted by ersatzhuman to Pets & Animals (16 answers total)

Best answer: I know its annoying, but could you put a gate at your bedroom door? Resident cat gets the safety of the bedroom, new cat explores the house, and they can both see each other. Then you can use that gate to act as a barrier while you get them doing things they enjoy in view of each other - eating, treats, playtime, etc.

You can do this for supervised times given the lack of a litterbox. But for the sake of a couple weeks, a temporary box might be handy and/or needed. Its all temporary… the box, the gate… just until they become comfortable in each others space.
posted by cgg at 7:05 AM on February 25, 2024 [5 favorites]

I'm sure you have read that it would be typical, if not expected, for an older queen to be permanently aloof to a new cat, especially a male. And some amount of hissing is going to be expected no matter how long you wait. It's stating a boundary. As time goes on that boundary may change; it has certainly changed with our older cat / teen kitten introduction. They have to get used to seeing each other at a distance before they will allow close contact.

I think you're doing fine and I would increase the amount of supervised together time from a few minutes to a couple hours over a few days, and then just say it's out of your hands and the cats have to sort it out on their own.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:25 AM on February 25, 2024 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I agree with seanmpuckett. The important thing is to avoid a confrontation between them that leaves them with bad associations, but from what you describe the risk of that sounds low. You say Resident Cat hisses and runs away to hide, and New Cat acts oblivious to her hissing and does not chase her. That actually sounds like a pretty good start. If he is very social and has previously lived with other cats he may have good social skills for this situation and may be able to navigate it well given the (supervised) chance.
posted by Rhedyn at 7:47 AM on February 25, 2024 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I should add that the bedroom door is a wide barn door, so a gate won't work there.

However, that suggestion makes me realize we could open it slightly and put some treats out to try and entice Resident Cat out from behind the curtain. (As an added complication, New Cat has shown he is capable of and motivated to open doors that don't securely latch, but we can probably secure it somehow).

It may also be relevant that this is explicitly a trial adoption, as otherwise he would've gone to the shelter or another foster home. I am open to answers that Resident Cat will likely never be happy with it; we would look after him until a forever home was found, without any guilt.
posted by ersatzhuman at 7:50 AM on February 25, 2024

I'd let them be free together and work it out. You're just prolonging what needs to happen. It will settle to what it will be. Only exception would be if they are physically fighting.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:00 AM on February 25, 2024 [3 favorites]

How long have you had the new cat? It took 3 months to introduce our last cat to the other 2, with only a few hisses here and there. They still don't love each other but they're fine sharing a room together. Even that took over a year (the one cat is very clingy and the new cat doesn't like it).
posted by fiercekitten at 8:02 AM on February 25, 2024

Yeah, your expectations might be too high here. "Hissing but no chasing/swatting" is great, keep letting them exist in hissing distance. As long as there's no escalation, they're doing fine. The end result is unlikely to be "they are sweet and cuddly with one another" and much more likely to be "they coexist with occasional brusque interactions" because they're cats, that's how cats generally work.
posted by restless_nomad at 8:21 AM on February 25, 2024 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Honestly I wouldn’t consider the physical separation thing to be An Absolute Necessity, it’s what you do IF the cats are physically fighting or massively stressing each other out, but it’s not like the cats will explode if you just… get rid of the barrier and let them interact or not as they will.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:21 AM on February 25, 2024 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: We've only had New Cat a couple weeks. I'd planned for a much slower introduction, but he immediately settled in and acts distressed at not being allowed upstairs.

To be clear, I'm not expecting miracles! Just trying to figure out what we should be doing right now, regardless of how slow it means an introduction would be.
posted by ersatzhuman at 8:30 AM on February 25, 2024

Oh, I missed that the only non-nice interactions so far was some hissing? Thats going to be completely 100% normal. Even my own 15 year old bonded sibling cats will be nasty hissing machines when one comes back into the house smelling different (vet, etc). You can keep their interactions supervised until your sure theyre not going to try to beat the crap out of each other, but otherwise a few hisses and even a swat or two are to be expected.
posted by cgg at 8:55 AM on February 25, 2024 [1 favorite]

Best answer: We have an older cat and adopted a younger cat. (She's 15, he's 12.) We tried to do the Jackson Galaxy slow introduction, feed on either side of the door thing, but they both have food insecurity issues so when we opened the door a crack things didn't go well. And we also had one cat downstairs, one cat upstairs, both cats upset about it. But after about three weeks of acclimation he got out when she was wandering around the house. They sort of stood stock still and stared at each other for a minute, and then...were okay? She hissed at him occasionally for a couple of weeks. For about a week more we separated them at night, and then things had gone well enough that we felt we could let them both circulate. This also made sure that each of them had some territory marked out as "theirs" that they could retreat to. Nowadays they lick each other and will even both lie on our bed a foot or so apart. They do tussle sometimes, but cats do that, and it's clear that it's not something that is going to escalate. (Really, what happens is that he tries to initiate wrestling play and she tells him to shove off.)

Aim for having them respectfully share space. You cannot expect them to become best buddies right away. I don't think our cats are ever going to cuddle (although if we took their heated beds away they might prove me wrong). But in cat socialization terms, they're actually quite amicable. One of the things Jackson Galaxy talks about is "blocking the unders" when you introduce cats. That means finding a way to prevent your elder cat from going under the bed. (This is also helpful if they actually do get into a fight - easier to throw a blanket over one and yank that one away if they're in the open.) From what you're saying, it sounds like so far things are moving in a positive direction.
posted by rednikki at 9:03 AM on February 25, 2024 [1 favorite]

Just some encouragement: we had two cats that seemed ready to fight at all opportunities, and in about 3 months they were both on the bed together. They weren't cuddling with each other, but they weren't hostile to being adjacent either. I did do some work related to occasionally giving them treats in bowls next to each other. But mainly we just couldn't manage to keep them apart, and after some rude interactions, the benefits of tolerating one another, like both getting space on the bed, won out.
posted by slidell at 2:41 PM on February 25, 2024

Response by poster: Thanks all. An update if anyone is interested: we blocked off under the couch in case they got into a fight where we couldn't reach (great suggestion!) and released New Cat. Resident Cat ran behind the curtain, and New Cat stood meowing at the curtain until we decided that was enough for one day.

No hissing, growling, or fur flying, so I'd call that a success!

Look forward to a future question about how to stop New Cat from meowing 16 hours a day, if that doesn't stop once he's allowed Resident Cat's company LOL
posted by ersatzhuman at 5:56 AM on February 26, 2024 [4 favorites]

I don't believe the cat tax has been paid . . .
posted by Dolley at 6:35 AM on February 26, 2024 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Please forgive me!

Cat Tax
posted by ersatzhuman at 10:29 AM on February 26, 2024 [4 favorites]

Even having them eat treats together ie on opposite sides of the same door seems to help my cats get along when we're having issues. Just to create more positive associations.
posted by chaiminda at 1:54 PM on February 26, 2024