About two weeks ago, my family and I took in a stray black kitten (it's about four months old, is that even still a "kitten" per se?) off of the street we live on. I was walking by and saw him, collarless, and I sat down and extended my hand. He came right over, and I managed to convince my mother to take him in for the time being. We've named him Truffles recently.
We took him to the vet, everything checked out negative, which is great
. However, we already have a resident female cat, Ginger, who is about five or six years old. We took in Truffles at a rather inopportune time, because we're going on a vacation for about three weeks straight. We actually just got back yesterday from a five-day trip, too; we just haven't had the time we'd like to have to properly introduce Truffles and Ginger.
We kept Truffles in our second garage until we had the vet check him out. The next two days we kept him in a rather small guest bathroom and left the door closed, gave him his own litter box in there, et cetera. He seems litter-box trained, and he likes people (he readily came to me when I found him), but we haven't been able to find his previous owners, so we're keeping him. The problem is, we began to let Truffles roam the house a little bit, with Ginger around too.
At first, he couldn't get close to Ginger, and she always hissed at him (and growled, too). But then we left for our short five-day trip - we had the neighbors coming over to feed them and play with them - and when we came back, Ginger wasn't putting him very much resistance, and he was jumping all over her, "attacking" and "biting" at the neck and such. She quite obviously doesn't like it, and she growls and occasionally hisses, but Truffles doesn't pay much attention.
We're leaving on Wednesday for the three-week vacation, and we'll have someone living in the house while we're gone, but I'm seriously worried about the two cats. As my mother puts it, Truffles is "terrorising" Ginger. I think he might be trying to release some pent-up energy, and I -think- he's teething too, although that's purely a guess. I know we haven't gone through the whole safe-room and one-sense-at-a-time introduction, but like I said, we took him in at a very inopportune time, and there's not much we can do to start over at this point.
Is there anything anyone here can recommend for this situation? Ginger's a rather laid-back cat, and when she plays with her toys with us she doesn't run after it, just lets it come to her in a sense. I think Truffles' energy is overwhelming her a bit too.
Please help...
We took him to the vet, everything checked out negative, which is great
We kept Truffles in our second garage until we had the vet check him out. The next two days we kept him in a rather small guest bathroom and left the door closed, gave him his own litter box in there, et cetera. He seems litter-box trained, and he likes people (he readily came to me when I found him), but we haven't been able to find his previous owners, so we're keeping him. The problem is, we began to let Truffles roam the house a little bit, with Ginger around too.
At first, he couldn't get close to Ginger, and she always hissed at him (and growled, too). But then we left for our short five-day trip - we had the neighbors coming over to feed them and play with them - and when we came back, Ginger wasn't putting him very much resistance, and he was jumping all over her, "attacking" and "biting" at the neck and such. She quite obviously doesn't like it, and she growls and occasionally hisses, but Truffles doesn't pay much attention.
We're leaving on Wednesday for the three-week vacation, and we'll have someone living in the house while we're gone, but I'm seriously worried about the two cats. As my mother puts it, Truffles is "terrorising" Ginger. I think he might be trying to release some pent-up energy, and I -think- he's teething too, although that's purely a guess. I know we haven't gone through the whole safe-room and one-sense-at-a-time introduction, but like I said, we took him in at a very inopportune time, and there's not much we can do to start over at this point.
Is there anything anyone here can recommend for this situation? Ginger's a rather laid-back cat, and when she plays with her toys with us she doesn't run after it, just lets it come to her in a sense. I think Truffles' energy is overwhelming her a bit too.
Please help...