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- Mar 27, 2017
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Will my cats come to tolerate (even, Gd willing, like) each other?
How can I tell when the situation has become hopeless?
(What is a normal amount of chasing and wrestling among cats in the same house?)
My spouse and I adopted 5 days ago a cat from a shelter/foster home. We adopted her as a companion for our current cat, a housecat who spends a lot of time by herself while we are at work. The cat we adopted is very sweet and seems to be a good match for our current cat in terms of age, sex, size and temperament. When we brought her home we gave her her own room with toys, food, litter box and a big window.
The new cat was understandably anxious around our current cat, and so we kept them separated and restricted their lines of sight to one another for the first few days. We then allowed them to see each other through the crack in a door, and then progressed to them playing with a toy in plain view of each other. If one of the cats would become anxious we would pet them to reassure them, and would do our best to reward good behavior as opposed to admonishing bad.
Over the past few days it's gotten to the point where the new cat is increasingly (and vocally) unhappy about being penned up in her room all day, and she often will slip out into the room where the veteran cat is. I am able to keep them both calm around each other to the point of them even ignoring each other in each other's presence, but eventually one will start to chase the other and then the hissing and growling by the new cat also resumes.
This usually happens if there is no person in the room to monitor them.
The last thing we want to do is re-home our new cat back to the shelter, but we are worried that they will never be able to be around each other without eventually becoming too anxious and then aggressive.
Advice is much appreciated. Thank you!
How can I tell when the situation has become hopeless?
(What is a normal amount of chasing and wrestling among cats in the same house?)
My spouse and I adopted 5 days ago a cat from a shelter/foster home. We adopted her as a companion for our current cat, a housecat who spends a lot of time by herself while we are at work. The cat we adopted is very sweet and seems to be a good match for our current cat in terms of age, sex, size and temperament. When we brought her home we gave her her own room with toys, food, litter box and a big window.
The new cat was understandably anxious around our current cat, and so we kept them separated and restricted their lines of sight to one another for the first few days. We then allowed them to see each other through the crack in a door, and then progressed to them playing with a toy in plain view of each other. If one of the cats would become anxious we would pet them to reassure them, and would do our best to reward good behavior as opposed to admonishing bad.
Over the past few days it's gotten to the point where the new cat is increasingly (and vocally) unhappy about being penned up in her room all day, and she often will slip out into the room where the veteran cat is. I am able to keep them both calm around each other to the point of them even ignoring each other in each other's presence, but eventually one will start to chase the other and then the hissing and growling by the new cat also resumes.
This usually happens if there is no person in the room to monitor them.
The last thing we want to do is re-home our new cat back to the shelter, but we are worried that they will never be able to be around each other without eventually becoming too anxious and then aggressive.
Advice is much appreciated. Thank you!
