Slow introductions didn't work

Just thought this was interesting. Due to our cats personalities, fast introductions were better than slow ones.

We just got Bunny on Friday. Puppy has an anxiety disorder (yes, both are cats ), so we thought it would be best to do the week-long slow introductions.

Big mistake.

Turns out, our new girl gets lonely. She's used to living with 40 cats and 3 people. The first night was fine. But the second night, she was in her room alone, and she cried ALL NIGHT. I thought Puppy was bad when he's having an anxiety attack. She literally did not stop. At 3:30, I rolled over and looked at Puppy, who was giving me this look like "Why won't she go to bed? Some of us need sleep!" Made me laugh considering the weeks on end he's kept us up.

Additionally, Puppy was very agitated. He kept walking up to her door and hissing because he could hear her back there. He grumbled every time I picked him up and was generally pretty standoffish.

The next day, I let her in our bedroom while Puppy was downstairs. She fell asleep on the bed and stayed there by herself. It seems the smell of another cat actually made her comfortable! I called her foster family, who confirmed that she slept with other cats and would be better off if we did introductions early. We determined Puppy was going to be agitated either way, so better get it over with.

So, last night, we did introductions after 48 hours. Lots of hissing and growling, but no one raised a paw. At one point, they even rolled over and showed their bellies to each other. Puppy appears to be the dominate cat, though Bunny actually claimed his sleeping towel and wouldn't let him up on the bed! Puppy actually is much better now than when they were separated; once he got to sniff her over good and figure out that he was dominate, he calmed down a lot and is back to purring when I pet him. Bunny is just happy to be with everyone else.

Last night, it did take them an hour to figure out their sleeping arrangements on the bed. But once they settled down, they BOTH slept through the night.

Peace at last. I finally will get to sleep.

Good luck settling Bunny in.

I would really recommend Feliway (lots of info on it in the forums if you serach). It comes as a plug-in diffuser or spray. It releases a pheremone which helps the cats to relax, feel happier and reduces anxiety. It really did help my other cats when introducing a cat into my house. I noticed a difference within a week.

We were prepared with two Feliway diffusers. One is in our bedroom, the other was with Bunny. It does help Puppy some, though he was still not totally ok. I hate to think what he would have been like without it. It didn't seem to help Bunny at all though, which is strange.

Second night of good sleep. This is wonderful. Puppy even purred.

Well, all pets are a little different. I've known some that have taken months to get used to each other.

I got a kitten a week ago today. Day one and I thought; oh god, this is going to take weeks and weeks... my older male cat was especially skittish and didn't want to come out of the bedroom, even though the kitten was in a seperate room behind a closed door across the house.

Feliway helped a lot. I got 2 defusers as well. It has only been a week, and now everyone is pretty comfortable with one another. Surprisingly, it was my older male cat that was first to make contact with the kitten by approaching and sniffing. There was a little hissing and growling at first, but no real fighting, and my adult male cat, even when batting the kitten with the paw as a warning to keep a respectful distance, never used his claws. Now he's fine around the kitten, and if he doesn't feel like being bothered by a frisky little kitty, he just gives the kitten a look, and the kitten leaves him alone until the older cat feels like playing.

My adult female cat is still prone to hiss if the kitten annoys her too much, but all in all everyone is settling down very well after only a week, and I feel fine with leaving the three of them in the house together when I go on short trips to town or am busy in the other room. So far, so good.

They're even already playing musical plates at treat time when I give them each a bit of fancy feast... they like to trade plates after a few bites as if sampling a buffet -_-