Hello! This is my first post here, and I'm asking for a little bit of advice. With my girlfriend I rescued a beautiful little 6 month old kitten 3 months ago. His name is sooty and he is jet black save for a little vicar-like white patch under his head.
Both my partner and I work during the day and we live in a 2nd floor apartment which is very large for London. We adopted Sooty from a woman nearby and he has always been an indoor cat. Though we've both lived with cats through out our lives this is the first time we've owned one ourselves, and are enjoying the experience immensely. He is neutered and very healthy, and can be playful and also very cuddly. Often he will play-fight after too much petting and can get rowdy every now and then and attack us as we go up the stairs. This I've attributed to being fairly young and there is never any malice. We follow the advice of stopping play when he gets 'play aggressive.' Either way he ends every evening on the sofa with us curled up and purring
Aaaanyway... so we thought he was a little bit lonely and we decided to get him a wee playmate. Her name is Courgette and she's a 8 week old spayed female kitten... also very cuddly and adventurous. We have read conflicting reports about introducing them so we have tried to find a middle way. The first 36 hours or so they were kept in seclusion, with some scent mixing. We had a few goes at playing under doors and at two days we had a supervised meeting. I realise this is quite fast in reference to the guidelines but I didn't want to leave Courgette in the 'safe room' for 9 hours when we are away. So after one or two hisses they began sizing eachother out. After some minor batting sessions Courgette played the 'submissive' role. However, when the two are together now, Sooty (who is about 3 times her size) chases her and paws her which occasionally makes her yelp and/or hiss. She is never frightened for long and forgets he's there and runs around. Neither is particularly frightened of the other, and they are able to eat fairly close to eachother. We have been careful to keep giving Sooty loads of affection and when Courgette is in her safe room everything is normal.
What to do?
Do you think things have progressed well so far and we should continue or should we go back to the original guidelines and seperate them for a week? This is still fairly new to me and I'd appreciate some feedback! Thank you soooooo much in advance! oh... and thanks for reading this looooong post!
micharionx
Both my partner and I work during the day and we live in a 2nd floor apartment which is very large for London. We adopted Sooty from a woman nearby and he has always been an indoor cat. Though we've both lived with cats through out our lives this is the first time we've owned one ourselves, and are enjoying the experience immensely. He is neutered and very healthy, and can be playful and also very cuddly. Often he will play-fight after too much petting and can get rowdy every now and then and attack us as we go up the stairs. This I've attributed to being fairly young and there is never any malice. We follow the advice of stopping play when he gets 'play aggressive.' Either way he ends every evening on the sofa with us curled up and purring
Aaaanyway... so we thought he was a little bit lonely and we decided to get him a wee playmate. Her name is Courgette and she's a 8 week old spayed female kitten... also very cuddly and adventurous. We have read conflicting reports about introducing them so we have tried to find a middle way. The first 36 hours or so they were kept in seclusion, with some scent mixing. We had a few goes at playing under doors and at two days we had a supervised meeting. I realise this is quite fast in reference to the guidelines but I didn't want to leave Courgette in the 'safe room' for 9 hours when we are away. So after one or two hisses they began sizing eachother out. After some minor batting sessions Courgette played the 'submissive' role. However, when the two are together now, Sooty (who is about 3 times her size) chases her and paws her which occasionally makes her yelp and/or hiss. She is never frightened for long and forgets he's there and runs around. Neither is particularly frightened of the other, and they are able to eat fairly close to eachother. We have been careful to keep giving Sooty loads of affection and when Courgette is in her safe room everything is normal.
What to do?
micharionx
