Introducing my cats to my girlfriends cat, moving in together.

Ok so my girlfriend and I have decided to buy a house together and move in.

She has a pure breed Persian about 2 years old, I have two cats about 4 years old, one is a Norwegian Forest Cat and the other a Toby, but not pure breeds.

All three cats have been raised from kittens by us but have never been introduced to each other or any other cats. My cats have never moved from my house other than vet visits. All three cats are indoor cats and have not been de-clawed. Her cat has moved once and handled it pretty well.

The main question I have is there any advise you can give for introducing new cats to each other and a new place to live?

We had planned on moving the cats on the same day so that no cat would have an advantage over the other cat. All three cats would be afraid of the new place and the new friends at the same time. Also we had planned on buying all new cat stuff so that no one cats scent would be brought over to the new house.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Well so far your plans are pretty sensible considering the big change involved for all the kitties. There are HEAPS of threads on here relating to introducing new kitties. You can do a forum search and look for keywords such as `introducing' etc...

The main thing to remember is that they WILL all be confused, scared and anxious and not to expect too much too soon. It will take some time.

I would also keep some of their old toys so they have some familiar scents around. Your idea is a good one, but they do need some kind of familiarity as cats are very much creatures of habit and EVERYTHING new all at once might be a bit more traumatic than it needs to be. You are obviously both very loving and caring towards your kitties though so that is the best thing for them.

But do a forum search you will have a wealth of information at your fingertips!

Good luck!

Please click here to read a thread full of information about how to introduce cats.

Good luck!

The worst case scenerio to expect is that they will fight and hiss at each other, more so in the beginning. My boyfriend and I moved in with each other last December and I look back now and think that we approached it wrong. They never were together before and we just plopped them together and let nature take its course. I don't wish that kind of nature on anyone: Luna went after Beauty and Patches, Patches hissed at Luna and Beauty all the time. Beauty was the only one that was passive.

Our case may have been the exception, not sure, but if I were to do that all over I would introduce them by dividing up our living area for the cats. That way Luna could get use to Beauty and Patches smell, etc.