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Kitty++
YamiNoSenshi
A point called ZIn the complex planeRegistered User regular
A point called ZIn the complex planeRegistered User regular
In a few weeks, my fiancee and I are finally moving out of our apartment and into a condo. The most important result of this is no more restrictions on pet ownership. Which means we would like to add a second cat to our one-cat household. I've done some research online about how to introduce a second cat, but I'd like to get some success (or failure) stories and advice from the kitty-knowledgeable H/A forumers.
Our current cat is a five year old neutered male that we adopted from my sister two years ago. He's laid back, affectionate, and very well behaved. He has no health issues of any kind since we got him treated for ear mites a year ago. He's indoor only but not declawed.
One thing I do know is we're not adding the second cat until our current one visibly and obviously is recovered from the move, since I know that can be stressful for cats. He took our move last year very well, so it shouldn't take him very long.
And I know the Unwritten Rule Of Kitty Threads. Say hi to Keller.
Our current cat is a five year old neutered male that we adopted from my sister two years ago. He's laid back, affectionate, and very well behaved. He has no health issues of any kind since we got him treated for ear mites a year ago. He's indoor only but not declawed.
One thing I do know is we're not adding the second cat until our current one visibly and obviously is recovered from the move, since I know that can be stressful for cats. He took our move last year very well, so it shouldn't take him very long.
And I know the Unwritten Rule Of Kitty Threads. Say hi to Keller.
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Put them in separate but adjoining rooms. Let them get used to each others scents by putting an item of each in the others room. Put their food bowls on opposite sides of the door so they have to be near each other but can't actually hurt each other.
Slowly but surely let them get to know each other while you supervise. Don't force it...it'll take a few days.
I am 100% set against declawing. It's cruel and inhumane. They're like fingers to the cat, not like Wolverine's claws or something. It's like cutting off your toddler's fingers because they keep grabbing stuff in the grocery store.
My first cat is roughly 2 years old, female, and not declawed. The new cat is about 1.5 years, female, and not declawed.
The way I introduced them was pretty much release them both into the house and when they find each other - SURPRISE.
There was some general disagreement - hissing and running away, but the claws never came out.
Hell, they fight (playfully and for real sometimes to determine dominance) all the time and ive yet to see any injuries or blood.
One thing to do when introducing them is to lavish praise on the old cat when the new one is in the room, so it doesn't feel left out.
Other than that - good luck, cats are so much happier in company.
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Probably not, but good on ya for getting a rescue cat. We'll be adopting from a shelter as well. The issue will be taking my fiancee in and not coming home with all the cats. All of them.
Here's what we did.
Put the cats in different sections of the house. Give the new cat the smaller chunk, preferably not the section of the house where the food & litter have always been. You want your old cat to have his routine disrupted as little as possible, so make sure his food bowl and litter box are where they've always been. You don't want him pissy because a stranger is in the room where his food always is and now he's eating somewhere else.
Get another litter box and keep it in the room(s) the new cat will be occupying. When in a new environment, especially if they are young, cats will often not travel more than a room away to find a litterbox. Get the cat it's own food and water bowls as well.
Leave them in this situation for a day or two until the new cat is very comfortable in it's new environment. Then slowly introduce him to more and more of the house. Let the new cat into the 'communal' areas of the house while the old cat is in his usual food/litter room. Let the new cat sniff around for an hour or two, then return him to 'his' room. Let the old cat out into the communal area to scout out where the new cat has been. This can go on for another 1-3 days, until both cats become more at ease with smelling the other in the communal rooms. Eventually you can fully swap their "home" rooms for a couple hours.
During the days this is going on, choose two of your towels, any size. Rub down one cat real well with one towel, rub the other cat with the second. when you feed them, put each towel nearby to the other cat's food bowl, within a foot or two. After the first couple feedings like this, put the towels actually under their food bowls. This will help the cats to associate the other cat's scent with pleasant experiences like being fed. Eventually you can pet/bellyrub both cats with eachother's towels, further enforcing that "other cat smell = good things".
Make sure during this time that you spend plenty of time with your old cat and give it lots of attention and affection. Spending all your time locked in your room with the new cat can make the old one jealous. To begin with, wash your hands before swapping cats, but within a couple days, you should go from one straight to the other, again reinforcing the connection of the other cat's scent and nice things like petting and playing.
After the first 3-4 days, you can start staging controlled meetings if possible. If you have a glass or espeically screen door, start letting them stare eachother down through it. Just a few minutes to begin with, more as/if they become more comfortable with eachother. You can let them sniff noses and hiss at eachother through a carefully slightly cracked door, if you don't have a glass or screen door or some other way of separating them.
When you go for the full unrestrained physical meeting, keep a blanket or two immediately on hand. If it comes to serious fighting, you may need to throw them on one/both to break it up. Make sure that initially they continue to be fed seperately, have seperate litterboxes, and for the first day or two after their unrestrained daytime access to eachother, they should probably still sleep seperately.
Keep in mind, this may take a week or two of this sort of slow introduction to get them to at least not want to kill each other, or it may take much less. They may never really "get along". If you can get them to tolerate and mostly ignore each other, consider that a win. Very few cats will simply not abide the presence of another cat, and not all cats will become actively friendly with their counterpart. If they just ignore and avoid each other, you've been successful.
TL;DR: Make the introduction as slow and incremental as you can possibly comprehend. If they are reacting well to each other initially, you can speed up the process.
Epilogue to our cat/kitten introduction: I think they may have gone gay for each other. It only took them 5-6 days to start mingling on a full time basis. They sleep in a big fur pile, clean each other, chase, wrestle, etc, etc. It was quite the transformation from the initial attempt of the older ones to actually kill the younger ones.
After about four days, we started feeding our older cat outside the bedroom. After six days, we propped a screen door up in the bedroom's doorway, so the two cats could see and hiss at each other.
When we finally let them mingle after ten days, they were quite friendly.
We had an elderly cat when we got two new kittens, and she was basically a crotchety old hag to them for the rest of her life. She stopped hissing and clawing at them after a few weeks, but she really never interacted with them other than to stop and glare as if to say "get off my lawn".
They will probably hiss/growl at each other for the first two weeks but it should pass. Even if one of the cats is being a huge bitch about it, as long as the other cat doesn't also freak out they will eventually become friends.
We've had him for several years now, but before we got him he did live in a multi-cat household, and he got along with those cats just fine. He's had time to establish that our house is HIS territory, and he doesn't want to share it.
When you actually move might be a good time to introduce the new cat. So that at the same time he is adjusting to a new place, he is adjusting to the idea of a shared territory. Rather than deciding that this new place is his and then trying to introduce an interloper.
They may get along great, they may not at first. Don't force it and they'll get used to each other over time.
when I was trying to introduce two cats, I found that the new and more scared one didn't react as badly if I held the other while they sniffed each other. As soon as I put him on the floor she started hissing at him though.
In about 6 weeks, we're going to move to NYC and get a 1 bedroom apartment. Since we're both going to be out all the time, we want to get a kitten companion for our current cat Toby.
We're trying to figure out what order to do all this in. I'm tempted to get the kitten now (2 months old probably?) so that we can be around as they get used to each other, before we start being out a lot due to graduate school. However, this means that they'll have only 6 weeks to get their shit together and then I'll throw them in a new apartment, and someone here said cats aren't the biggest fans of moving. Toby appears pretty okay with the moves we've had so far, but I'm concerned it could be problematic with a kitten he's just getting used to.
So when should I get the kitten?
Also, where should I get the kitten from? We can't find too many free kittens being given away, which is a shame because I like free. Some people are giving them away for like $40-45, but I don't think the kittens have been to a vet so they don't have shots, there's no guarantee they're healthy and such, etc. Or, we can get a kitten at a shelter, where they've been given shots and are presumably healthy, but that costs $80-100.
Where do you guys think we should get one? Also, I thought shelters were places I go to be a good citizen and save a kitten's life, why the fuck am I being made to pay $100?
And lastly, thank you Erandus for your ridiculously informative post. It should help a lot.
Here's Toby updating his blog:
Get your kittens from a rescue league. It is the kindest thing to do. Plus they are always fully screened for FIV and feline leukemia, and are required to have all their shots updated and be spayed/neutered before they can be adopted.
As you said, get a cat from a_random_person_01 and you have no idea what you're gonna get. You have to consider that getting a random cat from a stranger will basically require you to take it to a vet for a full checkup, unless they have extensive and immaculate records regarding the cat's upkeep. Around here a vet visit is 40 bucks and shots are 50 on top of that, so right there you've spent basically your shelter adoption fee, assuming that's all they need. If you're taking a kitten that you know has never seen a vet, you will spend more than that by the time you've taken care of immunizations and having it fixed.
Re: shelter fee, you're helping to pay for the food and medical upkeep of the animals sheltered there. Those places also have bills to pay.
EDIT: You also have the exact kind of cat I want, the tabby/white thing.
The reason shelters charge you $100 is (a) to recoup some expenses and (b) to make sure you're not going around picking up kittens to use for drug testing or worse.
Pet flipping is also not unknown, where people acquire a free pet from whatever source they can find and then unload it on craigslist or some other service and charge a "rehoming" fee.
Thanks for all the information. And he is an amazingly pretty cat... can you believe we found him in a tree? Who abandons a cat like that?
You said that the kittens are required to be neutered before you can adopt them, but don't kittens have to be like 5 months old or something for neutering? Does that mean you can't get ones younger than that there, they haven't been neutered yet, or you were referring only to the cats who were older than 5 months?
Hang around H/A for a few weeks and you will invariably see a "Someone abandoned this box of kittens on the side of the interstate, what do I do with them" thread. It happens, some people treat animals like... well.. animals? That comparison kinda flopped, but you get the picture.
They can be fixed much younger than that. The two kittens we got last month were 14 weeks old (3.5 months) and had been fixed a week or two before we got them. As early as 8 weeks old is not uncommon, from what I have heard.
Shelter cats are great. Most rescue groups that do adoption days at Petco and stuff are stocked with true believers who go out of their way to make sure all of their charges are healthy and placed in good homes. $100 is cheap considering you get a healthy kitten with all of their vaccinations, pre-fixed. Most places will even work a deal if you get two (we got our pair for $150
May I suggest looking into adopting a black or tuxedo cat? It's shocking how few of them get adopted compared to lighter-colored cats. Ours are awesome, they're like little furry ninjas.
Thanks for the tips. We're thinking of going to a Petco tomorrow since Saturday is adoption day. I think the black and white look is really cute, so we'll see who catches my eye. I'll keep you guys updated with pictures, hopefully soon.
We're moving into a new home and out intention is to screen in the patio and put the litter boxes out there with a cat door to let them in and out the back. The doors are sliding glass doors, and the cat door is an insert into this...
Anyone have any experiences with cats using these? This particular one will be plestic membrane flap, as opposed to solid plastic, which has a magnet at the base that you kinda have to push a little hard against to get it to open...
My wife and I are a bit concerned that they'll have no interest in trying to open it on their own...
Our plan was to bring the cats in through the back door, release them into the patio area and leave them out there until they learn how to use the cat door... Does this seem fair?
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This one in fact.
If it's nice enough out, just leave the flap open for a while until they get the picture that it's an entrance/exit, then close it.
We personally don't let our cats outside, but our cat box has a soft flap on it. Initially the cats refused to push through it, so we left it off for a couple days, they figured out that the litter was inside, and then we put the flap back on. Their desire to use the litter overrode their distaste of pushing the flap open. I'm guessing same deal for your door.
I'm sure your plan would work just as well in the long run. Make sure they have food and water in the patio and they'll figure it out eventually, especially if there's glass doors for them to see through.
I think this picture wins...
I plan on having the food inside... Who eats next to where they shit? Blegh...
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Holy shit! Sony's new techno toy!
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They all too very well to each other after a few months and now can be seen cleaning each other, hanging out, and hunting squirels(to which they always get their butts kicked). I would just be careful and watch them as they get used to each other.
Umm... are you sure you didn't steal someone's pet? :?
We had one of these to let the cats in the garage where the litter was kept. You might have to show the cat that you can push open the flap. Still don't be surprised if your cat is a bit finicky. Both cats definitely used it, but if anyone was sitting in the room adjoining the garage, one of them would sit in front of the door and wait for the person to get up and open it for him. I think it was this same one who would push the flap with his paw before going through instead of just running through it.
yeah, cats.
We 'reserved him', meaning we'll pick him up in a couple of days while we set up the apartment to get ready for 2 cats.
Anyway, one question: Kittens eat Kitten Chow, right? It's got special nutrients and it's more fatty and whatnot I'm told. But I'm also told that older cats shouldn't eat too much of it because it fattens them up. Since we just leave dry food out, how do I get Toby to eat his food and not the Kitten Chow?
So, here's a picture of the new kitten!
I -had- a 6 year old declawed and passive male cat named Salem (sorry at work >.< no pics allowed). Who is currently in a friends home with 3 other cats whom he gets along with. He also the type of cat that kids can drag around and he'll just lay there and pray for someone to save him
He has a 6 year old aggressive non-declawed female cat named Alias. By aggressive I mean she tries to attack the neighbor's kitten (but fails since she isn't agile anough to jump the fence, which makes for a great video camera moment!). She doesn't like childern, after 4 years she still tried to swipe at my kids.
Now the thought has come up about me getting my Salem back, and introducing Salem to Alias has made me nervous. I have read the various ways to introduce animals together, but I just don't know about his cat. He says they should be fine in a few days... I am worried Alias personality just won't allow for another cat. Thoughts?
About a year later, we had moved into our house, and my wife stumbled upon kitty #3. We again kept him separate from the other two, but this time around it last only a day or two. And all worked out well - kitty #1 just needed a little extra attention to get over a little jealousy.
Early last year, kitty #2 passed away, and not super long after we adopted yet another kitty. We kept her isolated for about 20 minutes, once in the house. No serious problems, but it did take quite a while for our boys to accept her and appear to form any kind of bond. Now we even catch them cuddling together once in a while - which hadn't happened with any of our cats previously.
And I fail as a kitty parent - only have online pics of one of them: