Hello, I am a long time cat owner and have had several good experiences with introducing cats to each other over the years, but my current situation has me a bit stumped. Here's the run down:
I have two male rescues who have lived together for years and get along very well. One is 6 years old, extremely intelligent, and rather stand-offish, and the other one is 5 years old and the exact opposite - love him to death, but he's a bit simple and he wants to be friends with EVERYTHING - dogs, bugs, inanimate objects, everything. We call him our puppy in a cat's body. He doesn't have a territorial, aggressive, or timid bone in his body. He's like a kitty carebear. This is a large part of the problem.
Both of them are fixed, have all of their shots, and healthy except for a genetic heart murmur in Gnat (the puppy-cat) which is currently mild but monitored bi-annually by my vet, and not in need of treatment. I recently adopted a new kitty - a 4 year old female spayed chinchilla teacup persian from her previous owner who found a persian a bit too high maintenance. She is declawed, and my boys are not, and she came with a full vet workup and is also in perfect health, though she weighs in at only 7 pounds due to her breed.
I took care with the introductions and even had them all tolerating each other, if not extremely happy with the situation, after about two weeks. Sej (the evil genius) is completely indifferent to her, but Gnat absolutely will not leave her alone, and after those two weeks, things started going back downhill as he seemed to be getting on her last nerve. He is not at all aggressive towards her - he slowly approaches until she hisses, and then lays down and kind of inches forward in an undignified scoot or stretch when she's not looking or when he thinks she'll let him get away with it, until he can reach out a paw and touch her. His ears never go back, and he does not hiss or lash his tail or show any other unhappy/angry/aggressive behavior. He also does not attempt to get overly friendly with her. He just sort of slowly reaches out to her across the carpet or up to her if she's sitting on something. It's very odd to watch.
For some reason, this eventually started to seriously freak the new kitty out even though she held her own quite well for over a week and even slept beside him with me on the bed on a few occasions. Now she's begun getting EXTREMELY frightened of him every time she sees him, to the point where she immediately starts backing away hissing and spitting. This gets his attention and makes him want to go over and see what the fuss is about, which makes her swing at him if she's not shut away, but since she's declawed, he thinks she's playing, which frightens her even more. She then immediately screams and bolts, so frightened she leaves a trail of urine and feces behind her.
After the first time this happened, I immediately sequestered the new kitty in a bedroom with a folding screen across the doorway that allows them to stick their paws underneath, but nothing else so they can exchange scents but not fight. I also purchased Feliway and plugged it in beside that doorway. After about two weeks, I tried to reintroduce them, by letting them be in the same room supervised, but with the same messy results after about an hour.
She does not seem frightened of my other cat, and she is not at all frightened of people (she's the most affectionate cat I've ever seen in my life), but Gnat scares the pooh out of her quite literally. I'm not sure how to go about acclimating them since in this instance, it would be very messy for her to learn through experience that he's not trying to hurt her. I'm fairly sure she wouldn't mind him at all, as she doesn't mind the other cat, if he were disinterested, but he's very very eager to get to know her.
She is very good about using the litter box and very well behaved unless she's running from him. Can anyone offer me any suggestions? I would hate to have to rehome her, though I do have a friend who might take her in. I've always wanted a chinchilla persian, but because I believe very strongly in rescues, I never thought I'd get to have one.
The situation at the moment, is that the new kitty is in the upstairs bedroom with the screen and Feliway, and has been for about three weeks. I let her out into my adjoining office for a few hours a day while I work until Gnat notices she's out and comes upstairs. When she starts showing signs of fear or aggression, I put her away. I've tried treats, but Gnat is the only one who really likes special foods, and he already associates the new cat with awesome-fun-time. I've tried petting the new cat throughout Gnat's presence, but she just gets more and more tense until I am forced to put her away. She's not very playful, so I can't entice her to play in his presence - she really just loves to be petted so that's really the only incentive I have.
Should I just give it more time? I've never had it take this long to get two cats used to each other before. Any suggestions you may have would be greatly appreciated, and I apologize for the length of my post!
I have two male rescues who have lived together for years and get along very well. One is 6 years old, extremely intelligent, and rather stand-offish, and the other one is 5 years old and the exact opposite - love him to death, but he's a bit simple and he wants to be friends with EVERYTHING - dogs, bugs, inanimate objects, everything. We call him our puppy in a cat's body. He doesn't have a territorial, aggressive, or timid bone in his body. He's like a kitty carebear. This is a large part of the problem.
Both of them are fixed, have all of their shots, and healthy except for a genetic heart murmur in Gnat (the puppy-cat) which is currently mild but monitored bi-annually by my vet, and not in need of treatment. I recently adopted a new kitty - a 4 year old female spayed chinchilla teacup persian from her previous owner who found a persian a bit too high maintenance. She is declawed, and my boys are not, and she came with a full vet workup and is also in perfect health, though she weighs in at only 7 pounds due to her breed.
I took care with the introductions and even had them all tolerating each other, if not extremely happy with the situation, after about two weeks. Sej (the evil genius) is completely indifferent to her, but Gnat absolutely will not leave her alone, and after those two weeks, things started going back downhill as he seemed to be getting on her last nerve. He is not at all aggressive towards her - he slowly approaches until she hisses, and then lays down and kind of inches forward in an undignified scoot or stretch when she's not looking or when he thinks she'll let him get away with it, until he can reach out a paw and touch her. His ears never go back, and he does not hiss or lash his tail or show any other unhappy/angry/aggressive behavior. He also does not attempt to get overly friendly with her. He just sort of slowly reaches out to her across the carpet or up to her if she's sitting on something. It's very odd to watch.
For some reason, this eventually started to seriously freak the new kitty out even though she held her own quite well for over a week and even slept beside him with me on the bed on a few occasions. Now she's begun getting EXTREMELY frightened of him every time she sees him, to the point where she immediately starts backing away hissing and spitting. This gets his attention and makes him want to go over and see what the fuss is about, which makes her swing at him if she's not shut away, but since she's declawed, he thinks she's playing, which frightens her even more. She then immediately screams and bolts, so frightened she leaves a trail of urine and feces behind her.
After the first time this happened, I immediately sequestered the new kitty in a bedroom with a folding screen across the doorway that allows them to stick their paws underneath, but nothing else so they can exchange scents but not fight. I also purchased Feliway and plugged it in beside that doorway. After about two weeks, I tried to reintroduce them, by letting them be in the same room supervised, but with the same messy results after about an hour.
She does not seem frightened of my other cat, and she is not at all frightened of people (she's the most affectionate cat I've ever seen in my life), but Gnat scares the pooh out of her quite literally. I'm not sure how to go about acclimating them since in this instance, it would be very messy for her to learn through experience that he's not trying to hurt her. I'm fairly sure she wouldn't mind him at all, as she doesn't mind the other cat, if he were disinterested, but he's very very eager to get to know her.
She is very good about using the litter box and very well behaved unless she's running from him. Can anyone offer me any suggestions? I would hate to have to rehome her, though I do have a friend who might take her in. I've always wanted a chinchilla persian, but because I believe very strongly in rescues, I never thought I'd get to have one.
The situation at the moment, is that the new kitty is in the upstairs bedroom with the screen and Feliway, and has been for about three weeks. I let her out into my adjoining office for a few hours a day while I work until Gnat notices she's out and comes upstairs. When she starts showing signs of fear or aggression, I put her away. I've tried treats, but Gnat is the only one who really likes special foods, and he already associates the new cat with awesome-fun-time. I've tried petting the new cat throughout Gnat's presence, but she just gets more and more tense until I am forced to put her away. She's not very playful, so I can't entice her to play in his presence - she really just loves to be petted so that's really the only incentive I have.
Should I just give it more time? I've never had it take this long to get two cats used to each other before. Any suggestions you may have would be greatly appreciated, and I apologize for the length of my post!
