Is there no hope for a second kitty?

September 8, 2010 2:33 PM

Is there any way to gauge whether my cat would accept a new feline addition?

So I have this love 4-5 year old cat named Rhubarb. She is about as fantastic as any cat can be, I love her so hard I can barely breathe, but I would like to get a second cat. She was a shelter kitty that I adopted when she was about a year and a half old and has been a ridiculously friendly, sociable, cuddly cat from day one, no emotional scarring from her pre-me life. She is very trusting of strangers and is more than a little stupid. Basically, she is the feline equivalent of the best human you know. I'd like to get her (and me) a buddy.

However, a couple months ago my cousin needed me to house her cat for a month while she was out of town and it was a catpocalypse. Despite keeping them separated and trying to break them in slowly they absolutely hated each other. My lovely, friendly, kind kitty turned into a demon cat. She hissed and challenged the other cat constantly, engaged in kitty battles where she was the instigator, and basically made my life hell. I wonder if it was maybe extra bad with my cousin's cat because it was another adult, female cat?

I read on the interwebs that a cat of a different gender would work better. Would adopting a male kitten likely be better? Or should I just abandon my quest for a second cat? I really want another cat but not if it causes Rhubarb endless emotional stress. :(

posted by gwenlister to Pets & Animals (20 answers total)

Can you try fostering? Although shelters like fosters who will keep fostering different animals, you can usually keep a foster animal if you really want to.
posted by Mavri at 2:38 PM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

We're currently going through a similar process. We're introducing two kittens into a house ruled by a 7-year old. The older cat is female, and we intentionally picked male kittens, with the hope that the gender difference would alleviate some of the problems. We also decided to go with two kittens, with the idea that they'll keep themselves occupied if the older one wants some alone time.

We're also slowly introducing the kittens to the old one -- mostly be necessity, since the cats came to us with worms, so we've kept them quarantined. (I expect this may be part of why your recent house-guest's stay wasn't as pleasant for your cat as you might have hoped.) But we've taken steps to provide safe, non-confrontational events -- putting a pegboard barrier in front of the door where the kittens are staying, so they can see and smell through it and the rest of the house where the big cat is. A few days after doing that, we introduced a little gap in the bottom of the barrier, so they can pass toys and paws back and forth. Sure, there's been a little hissing from the old lady, but not half as bad as we expected it to be. See, when we introduced the now older cat to the household, we had a much older, 15 year old female cat, and we allowed the introduction to be more abrupt. It didn't go so well, with the kitten tormenting the older cat incessantly.

We're also using a doodad that you plug into an outlet that supposedly introduces calming pheromones to keep everyone off edge. It's pricey, and I can't tell you if it's actually doing anything.
posted by crunchland at 2:51 PM on September 8, 2010

A kitten would definitely be better. Cats (especially females) are much more tolerant toward kittens than toward other adults. They're much more likely to become close as the kitten grows up, also. My two were adopted separately as adults ten years ago, and while they tolerate each other well, they won't get closer than about a foot apart without drama, even after all this time. My boyfriend got a kitten for his cat a couple years ago, and now they sleep curled up together and even groom each other -- it's a huge difference. And he'd tried adult cats with his previously, with disastrous results.
posted by vorfeed at 2:53 PM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

Vats will, by their very natures, be hostile to each other at first. Kittens are SLIGHTLY exempt from the feline hierarchy and thus can sometimes slip in without much retribution, but there's probably going to be some fighting, hissing, territorial crap going on. In almost all cases the situation resolves itself within a month or two.

Definitely get a second (or third, if you can) litterbox, and feed them apart if you have to.
posted by Heretical at 2:53 PM on September 8, 2010

My cat was about the same age as your when I adopted a kitten. I asked the vet if I should get a cat or a kitten and he said a kitten, without hesitation, because it would be much easier to introduce them to each other.

There was some territorial dispute, and a lot of the kitten just being a jerk to her in the same way teenagers can be jerks until she got tired of it and slapped him silly, but for the most part they get along, and occasionally I find them cuddling. Well, it's more that the younger cat comes and flops over on top of the older and she either gets angry and slaps him, or decides to be tolerant and starts grooming him. There seems to be a correlation with how well they tolerate each other and the temperature - when it's cold, they're best buddies and share body heat.

I do have to feed them apart, because it stresses the older cat out if she has to share a bowl with the younger, but six to eight feet apart is acceptable to her, so there's a bowl on either side of the breakfast nook for them.
posted by telophase at 3:04 PM on September 8, 2010

Oh, you are me 5 years ago.

I have a wonderful kitty, Bachik. She was happy and we were a great pair.

Then I moved in with my boyfriend and his dog Roark.

Roark and Bachik got along okay and all was well.

Then I thought that it'd be nice for us to have a pet "together" so we adopted a kitten Tina.

Bachik was not happy about this. I should have guessed. When I lived in a duplex once, she hated the cat next door, much less in her space.

Bachik started hanging out under the bed and in the closet all the time. She didn't want to snuggle with me.

Then she started peeing on stuff that was not the litter box. She destroyed a step in our last home.

I tried all the regular stuff - UTI, Feliway, and now Prozac. Prozac worked.

But Bachik, even now, 5 years later, isn't the Bachik that she once was. She and Tina tolerate each other better now, but it took about 3 years to get them to tolerating each other. Bachik won't sleep on the bed if Tina is on it. Bachik also chases Tina away if Tina tries to sit on our laps.

So basically we lost our good cat Bachik and Tina has had no opportunity to become a good cat because Bachik doesn't let her.

DON'T DO IT.
posted by k8t at 3:05 PM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

I was in a similar situation this summer: 7 year old female cat that I love to death, and wanting to get another cat. And I went for it: just adopted a 7 month old male kitty almost 3 weeks ago. I think that the male kitten route is a really good way to go. My little guy happens to be extremely friendly and laid back, and still very playful and baby-ish. His personality has been a huge asset during the cat introduction production. In the last week, they moved up from through-the-door sniffing to full-on surpervised "play dates." There has been occasional fighting -- when he gets a bit hyper and just wants to play with her sooooo much that he barges into her personal space. She gets depressed after the fighting episodes, but he's completely undisturbed by them. I was really surprised by how much the fighting upset me: be prepared to feel guilty for upsetting Rhubarb's world. But seriously, every day she gets more comfortable around him. She's totally the dominant one, and he seems happily submissive and aware that he's in her space. I'm very optimistic that they will get more comfortable with each other as time goes on. Go to your local shelter and look for a baby with a great personality. Get a cheerful little lad who is well socialized and laid back. It will upset Rhubarb (and make you feel a little guilty), but she will get over it. Hope my experience is helpful!
posted by sk932 at 3:14 PM on September 8, 2010

FWIW, my older cat hates our neighbor's grown cat who she sees through a window when it comes out on the balcony. She hasn't shown nearly that level of aggression towards the new kitten.
posted by sk932 at 3:17 PM on September 8, 2010

Adding to my previous comment: I was planning on slowly introducing the cat and the kitten, but the kitten had other plans and after a few days of being shut in a room away from her took the opportunity to escape every chance he could get. So I gave up and let them work it out, and within a couple of days the kitten was snuggling up next to the cat, and she was grooming him.
posted by telophase at 3:23 PM on September 8, 2010

Just went through this with an older female cat and a baby female kitten. The first three weeks were hell; I was sure the adult would murder the kitten. Then we got Feliway -- the plug-in kind. We used two for three months. By the end of that period these two were best friends. Now they cuddle all day long.
posted by BlahLaLa at 3:26 PM on September 8, 2010

It really depends on your kitty. I have had a lot of successful new cat introductions over the years, which all need to go very, very slowly to work (i.e. new cat lives in sealed off area for awhile, then very, very gradual introduction of smells, then sight of new kitty, then actual new kitty for brief periods.) The most successful ever was when I adopted a male kitten about two-three weeks after adopting a female kitten -- those two remain bonded.

But, I also had a disastrous cat intro with my beloved old guy to a very sweet, stupid young female cat, which ended with him never feeling comfortable again in our house, and new kitty gradually being evicted from all rooms, one by one, so that she never regained her old friendly fearlessness, even after old guy died.

Cats are very into dominance and territoriality. It is just how they are built. A male kitten might work, but I think the message you got from the last experience is that your kitty doesn't want to share your home or you.

My feeling is, don't rock the boat unless there is need, e.g. a cat that desperately needs rescuing. Your cat sounds so happy as it is, and so do you.
posted by bearwife at 3:46 PM on September 8, 2010

I had a situation where I introduced a male kitten into a home with an adult female cat. It did not go well. She never got used to him wanting to play and his play became more about dominating her as he got older and bigger. Luckily, my SO and I broke up and we were able to split the cats up too! Some people have great results, but when it goes poorly it is a huge pain in the ass. (Um, that goes for both humans and cats I guess)
posted by orme at 4:22 PM on September 8, 2010

First let me say that unfortunately there are always cats in desperate need of rescuing. I hope you will not be dissuaded from saving one.

I have two female littermates. One of them does something referred to as "redirected aggression." After having been together since conception, at about 2.5 years one of them spotted another cat outside and attacked the other one. It took about 6 months of hard work to get them back together, but they are back to grooming one another and are depressed when they are apart. We have to reenact a very abbreviated version of this process every time they go to the vet because the cat who does the redirected aggression (and who does so because she is extremely scared) does not recognize the smell of her sister and freaks out. It takes less than a week to get them back together now. My husband and I are very good at this by now. Here are the keys:

1. Do it very slowly. You want to build on short and positive experiences. If somebody has a chance to do something hurtful or scary, it will be far harder.

2. Do it one sense at a time. This book contains a chapter that explains how to do that.

3. In addition to building up in extremely small increments--I'm talking less than 30 seconds for the first encounter--give each cat something she loves during that encounter. It might be food, playing or petting, for example. This does two things. It gets the cats to associate pleasure with being in each others company and it provides a slight distraction. During the most stressful part of our "therapy," we used play because it was so distracting. We had two baby gates stacked on top of each other in the doorway and I was with one cat and my husband was with the other on the other side. We did not even try to make them interact. We just played with their favorite toys a few feet from one another (with the baby gates between us for security). When you reach this stage (sight, smell, and sound), you need to make sure either cat can get away from the situation if she wants to (i.e., she has a place to run and hide). When that happens, you are done for that session of "therapy." You close a solid door between them and give everyone a break. [If you are doing this alone, you would want to be with the older cat for these exposures.]

Eventually we built up to playing with one toy under the gates (at that point allowing a 2.5-3 inch gap for paws underneath). Pawing at each other is a good thing at that stage. It is part of the process. At the next stage, we actually built what we call "the prison door" that would allow them to interact all day without our supervision. Finally we repeated this same pattern (starting with very short time periods and intense playing and supervision) without the baby gates.

I know this sounds like a lot of work. We were working with the hardest case scenario because my cats had actually (but mildly) physically hurt each other. It is not likely that your process would be this protracted.

I do not know cat psychology from quantum physics, but we worked with a psychologist at Mercer University who taught us how to do all of this. I will tell you that when I told him everything I read on the internet about cat's social maturity, etc. he insisted that cats are not territorial. They are not hissing and the like out of outright aggression but out of fear. If you approach the cats as fearful (especially the more aggressive behaving cat), you will be successful because that is the root of the problem. Just as you would do with humans who are fearful, you have to expose them in short doses and with slowly increasing intensity to the thing they fear while helping them to associate that thing with pleasure. Once they know there is nothing to be afraid of, all will be well.

All I can say is that this has been our experience and my cats who once freaked at the sight of one another now groom each others ears and are much, much happier together.
posted by Original 1928 Flavor at 5:03 PM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

Make catnip tea and drizzle a little on both of the cats' heads. Cats love catnip more than they hate other cats. It's kind of like turning the cats into each other's crack dealer! I've done this several times in the past, and it worked like a charm. Sometimes they'd still get a bit pissy with each other in the first few days, but they always worked it out -- especially when it was catnip time.
posted by GnomeChompsky at 5:04 PM on September 8, 2010

I'm in the "Don't rock the boat" category, but... there's a way, as I've shared before:

Get the cats in the bathroom. Open two cans of tuna. Dump the oil from one can on each of the cats. Leave the bathroom. Check back in a half hour or so.

Did it when a new cat moved in, did it again when a third arrived. They all love each other now.

(As noted by the asker in that thread, wet cat food will not work. Tuna oil only, because they can't shake it off.)
posted by Etrigan at 5:07 PM on September 8, 2010

We had a grouchy two year-old female cat when we decided to adopt a male kitten. Our adult cat hated other cats, became enraged when seeing another cat walking around outside (she was an indoor cat), but still we were hopeful. After the initial angry stage, eventually we found the adult cat in a basket with the kitten, and she was licking him. It was adorable.

She continued to try to lick him right on through his growing into an adult, when he didn't like it so much anymore. He always acted like the annoying little brother to her, jumping on her and biting her scruff when all she wanted to do was look out the window, but in the end I think they liked each other. Eventually she became very ill and was that way for about a month, and he stayed by her side the entire time. He never seemed as peppy once we put the older cat to sleep.
posted by wondermouse at 5:22 PM on September 8, 2010

Short answer to the question in the first sentence of your post: no, there is no way to gauge that. Longer answer is that introducing a new feline to an established one often turns ugly - in my experience more often than not - but that said I have, rarely, seen it occur with relatively few problems.

Usually it's the existing resident cat that gets most arsey about things because his/her lovingly marked and established territory is being invaded and kitties do not take kindly to this.
posted by Decani at 5:54 PM on September 8, 2010

I wouldn't risk it, but that's because of our story.

Our cats have to live on separate floors of our house (and before when we were in an apartment, the kitten was relegated to just a single room) because they just cannot get along. We never planned to get a kitten, because we knew the old lady cat didn't like other cats, but we literally found a dying kitten in our street and when you take a dying kitten to the emergency vet they expect you to take her home, too.

Our situation is made worse by the fact that:
1. they are both female
2. one is 12 years old and well-established in our family territory-wise and grumpy as hell
3. the combination of the personalities of the two is not conducive to working it out

That is, grumpy old lady is mean and stalks and attacks the (not a kitten anymore) kitten. The kitten, a former feral, is very skittish and her solution to everything is to run and hide and only defend herself when cornered. The result is that the old cat stalks and chases and attacks the kitten, and the kitten runs and hides and then the old cat doesn't allow her to leave her hidey place, ever. Eventually we gave up on trying to get them to live together, because the drama and the screaming and the constant attacks was making everyone miserable.

That said, now that we have a house with a door at the bottom of the stairs, they each live very happily unaware of (or at least able to ignore) each others' existence on the other floor. But we can never let them interact, ever. It's not the easiest way to live, and they each miss out on a lot of time with us because we can't be two places at once. The old cat never gets to sleep in the bed with us anymore, and the kitten doesn't get to hang out with us during the day.
posted by misskaz at 6:46 PM on September 8, 2010

I've done this twice.

When I lived in Chicago, I adopted Streak (female), an evil gray kitty who was literally the LAST cat at the city shelter available for adoption. She bit me twice before I could get her home. (She was an AWESOME badass of a cat and I still miss her desperately.)

A few years later I decided she needed a friend and I brought home Gremlin, a teeny tiny kitten I found behind Damenzo's pizza in Chicago. Streak decided this was HORRID and basically kicked Gremlin's ass for a year and then ignored her thereafter, for 16 years.

Streak died over Christmas this year, at the age of 21. She never liked Gremlin but they attained an uneasy peace over the years. But Gremlin clearly always wanted to be her friend and was really listless when she died.

Recently, my partner brought home a 1-year-old cat now named "Jack" (short for jack-ass, hi-jack, and other things that a vet might not be happy about).

He lived in a bathroom for a week, and when I began introducing them I gave them both outrageous treats so they'd associate each other with good things (tuna in oil, meat baby food, kitten chow).

Now they get along really well and occasionally bathe each other. I'm glad my old cat has some new life and Jack (now also occasionally called "bitch boy") has someone to keep him in line.
posted by answergrape at 10:38 AM on September 10, 2010

What I mean to say after that is.... the opposite gender/younger cat combo worked for me. I hope you'll give it a shot and give some nice kitty a home.
posted by answergrape at 10:45 AM on September 10, 2010