cat hissing and hiding from new kittens!

hello! i'm new to the site, i just registered. greetings! i am the happy owner of a siamese mix and a mutt (half persian, half i'm not sure?). they are named thing 1 and thing 2, from the characters in the dr. seuss book! they are a little over a year old.

my boyfriend just brought home 2 bengal kitties. we live in separate apartments, but he is at work often and we were hoping i could have all four cats at my apartment to attend to.

unfortunately, thing 2 has always been a VERY timid cat. she startles easily, and spends a lot of her day hiding. she is NOT happy about the kittens. she hisses and growls at them, and she refuses to do anything in the house while they are there but scamper from hiding place to hiding place. she makes a deep, low growl and won't let me touch her. the kitties spent five or so hours at my house yesterday, and she spent the time hissing, growling, and hiding. once the kitties left, she seemed to be fine.

i was hoping to have the kitties at my house often, is this not going to be possible due to the way thing 2 handled their arrival? is there anything i can do to make the cats get along? the kitties seem to have no problem with the cats! thing 1 seemed to be a bit frightened of them in the beginning, but nothing as problematic as the situation with thing 2.

ANY advice on how i could get thing 2 to warm up to the kittens (or even just to come out of hiding and tolerate their presence without growling)? i was really hoping to spend time with all four cats!

THANKS SO MUCH!

<3,
kali

Welcome first of all!!

There are threads on here about introducing new cats. You have to follow them or else there will be complete chaos in your home. Remember they will eventually get along and you need to have patience.

Some things to look into:

-Feliway plug ins, and Feliway Spray
-Pure Vanilla extract to put on their neck, head, shoulders and base of tail.


Do not just let them all go in the same room and expect them to all get along. They most likely won't. Keep them in seperate rooms for a few days. Allowing them to smell each other through the door or under the door. You can swap a blanket between them every few days so they can smell each others smells. Then put the kittens in a dog crate if you can. So they can see and smell more of each other but can't interact.

When you finally let them be together, this could be after a couple days or a couple weeks. Just see how the cats react. Hissing and growling are completely normal. Expect that to happen and let it go. If you are nervous then they will sense it and stress out even more. Let them growl and hiss and maybe swat if one gets too close. Only tim you need to worry is if blood is being drawn.

Please do look into getting Feliway. I don't know a website but do a google search for it. You can get it at any pet store pretty much. It is a bit expensive but is well worth it. Good luck and remember to be patient and don't just throw them all together. Oh also never bring one cat up to the other. They will react to things like how high in the air the new cat is compared to them. Status is important to them. They will also seem to fight over senority and alpha cat status but you have to let them do this. As long as there is no blood being drawn they are fine and will do this no matter what. You cannot determine that for them.

Please make sure all your cats are all spayed or neutered too, this will make a huge difference on how they get along and you really don't want them reproducing.

yah, i searched through some topics and read the instructions on this site about introducing cats, so now i feel a bit more informed! thanks!

i feel like i made a lot of mistakes yesterday--i put them in the same room right away, i carried the kitties up to the older cats and tried to get them to interact. *sigh* i really hadn't looked into cat interaction at all! it seems so easy to make errors caring for kitties!

so i put the blanket the kitties were laying on yesterday out for thing 1 and thing 2 to smell.

i will definitely look into getting feliway--it seems like something thing 2 would REALLY benefit from. she is a very skittish cat, she never feels at ease. it frustrates me, and sometimes i feel like i'm doing something wrong. maybe feliway could make her a happier cat!

and yes, we have spayed/neutered all the cats except the smallest girl kitten, she didn't weigh enough at the time to be spayed.

thanks for the advice!

<3,
kali