Getting A New Kitten

[Catsr#1]

Hi all,
I am new to this site and not sure I picked the correct thread to ask my question. Here goes:I had 3 cats , but lost one earlier this yr. to kidney failure. Now my boy whomis 14 also has early CDK.My question is would it be a bad idea tombring in a new cat to the mix at this time? My other cat is 5 yrs. Old. I don't want to stress out anybody.What are your thoughts? Only having 2 cats is giving me severe empty nest syndrome. LOL!

 

[Furballsmom]

Hi! Welcome!!
I'm very sorry to hear about your loss.

It depends, as you mentioned, --and you know your cats best, would your CKD boy be stressed out by a new kitty?

It can be difficult to know sometimes. Could you possiblyspeak with a shelter and foster a cat to see how things go, and if things don't work then be able to bring the new kitty back to the shelter?

 

[samyoz]

from my experience in introducing kittens and knowledge about it
I've introduced kittens to other kittens 3-4 times, and I know for a fact that introducing a cat/kitten to an older resident cat is harder and stressful than I have ever tried.
so if your question is specifically about whether or not he's gonna be stressed, the answer simply is ofc yes he is gonna.
if you imply that if the stress is long/short term? or how would he cope with it? or how should u do it? then tell me because I think I can help with this, so the introduction go better

 

[ArtNJ]

Yeah, samyoz is 100% right, its almost always some degree of hard with older cats. Really any cat over two is kind of likely to get stress interacting with kittens. Sometimes an active mid-age cat might be ok, but best to plan on stress. Sometimes it can be quite short term and nothing big, and sometimes longer lasting and hard to deal with. With a 14 yo kidney cat, there isn't a lot of margin for added stress you know? So as Furballsmom suggested, it might be best to see if you have a return option. I mean, there is gonna be stress 90% likelihood, but if its worse than usual, and your kidney cat is flipping terrified and stops using eating and/or using the litterbox, which is rare but possible, you can just call it then and there.