Adopted a 5 year old male cat on July 23rd renamed him Bailey. Have two other male adult cats that have been together from the kittenish age (they were both a few months old when introduced), they are both a little over 4 years old.
After reading some articles I followed the advice and setup a place just for Bailey - basically it's a full sized bathroom + a walk in closet. I have it setup so his litter box is in the bathroom, water in both rooms, food and blankets in the closet (he prefers to sleep up high in the closet). Both the bathroom and closet open up into my down stairs den area so often in the evenings I could close the door to the den area and open Bailey's doors so he has more room to come out and so he could get use to me. I can't keep this closed off all the time because the main litter box is located in the laundry room which is off of this den area for my other two cats.
It took Bailey about 3 weeks to warm up to me - prior he would growl and hiss at seeing me. Now he head butts me and climbs all over me and likes to lay on the top of my chair when I'm on my PC and headbutt the back of my head while watching the fish in the aquarium (my PC and larger aquarium are in this den area). During this time I'm doing the scent exchange of blankets and what not but none of the cats want anything to do with the blanket when exchanged.
So lately I have started to put my other two cats in the bathroom + closet and letting Bailey have his run of the house. This past weekend I had Bailey out on the deck (have a nice large deck high enough that the cats won't try to jump off from) and shut the screen door and put a baby gate as well (for double protection) and let all three see each other. Bailey and Cooper just hissed and growled at each other while Avery tried to storm the baby gate to get to Bailey.
I should mentioned that weeks prior Avery got into the den area while I had Bailey out accidentally and those two did fight - well kinda fight. They made a TON of noise and Avery chased Bailey and cornered him and just stood over him. I managed to separate them and I checked each for any injuries and there were none (seriously sounded like tons of blood shed and that one of them was getting murdered).
Now I am just alternating days on who gets run of the house and who gets put in the bathroom/closet and I'm feeling rather bad about it as they are all sweet cats. Avery is my dog's boy and when he doesn't sleep with her she starts looking for him at night and Cooper is the one who always sleeps on my head so of course I miss that at night, but at the same time Bailey is now starting to sleep on my bed and inches closer and closer each night so I feel bad when he has to sleep downstairs.
Is there anything else I should be doing? Anything I can now do to speed this process up? Having a divided household isn't much fun and I hate to say this, but I understand now why there are so many adult cats in shelters and such. This is insanely difficult and I know for myself in the future I won't be doing this again.
After reading some articles I followed the advice and setup a place just for Bailey - basically it's a full sized bathroom + a walk in closet. I have it setup so his litter box is in the bathroom, water in both rooms, food and blankets in the closet (he prefers to sleep up high in the closet). Both the bathroom and closet open up into my down stairs den area so often in the evenings I could close the door to the den area and open Bailey's doors so he has more room to come out and so he could get use to me. I can't keep this closed off all the time because the main litter box is located in the laundry room which is off of this den area for my other two cats.
It took Bailey about 3 weeks to warm up to me - prior he would growl and hiss at seeing me. Now he head butts me and climbs all over me and likes to lay on the top of my chair when I'm on my PC and headbutt the back of my head while watching the fish in the aquarium (my PC and larger aquarium are in this den area). During this time I'm doing the scent exchange of blankets and what not but none of the cats want anything to do with the blanket when exchanged.
So lately I have started to put my other two cats in the bathroom + closet and letting Bailey have his run of the house. This past weekend I had Bailey out on the deck (have a nice large deck high enough that the cats won't try to jump off from) and shut the screen door and put a baby gate as well (for double protection) and let all three see each other. Bailey and Cooper just hissed and growled at each other while Avery tried to storm the baby gate to get to Bailey.
I should mentioned that weeks prior Avery got into the den area while I had Bailey out accidentally and those two did fight - well kinda fight. They made a TON of noise and Avery chased Bailey and cornered him and just stood over him. I managed to separate them and I checked each for any injuries and there were none (seriously sounded like tons of blood shed and that one of them was getting murdered).
Now I am just alternating days on who gets run of the house and who gets put in the bathroom/closet and I'm feeling rather bad about it as they are all sweet cats. Avery is my dog's boy and when he doesn't sleep with her she starts looking for him at night and Cooper is the one who always sleeps on my head so of course I miss that at night, but at the same time Bailey is now starting to sleep on my bed and inches closer and closer each night so I feel bad when he has to sleep downstairs.
Is there anything else I should be doing? Anything I can now do to speed this process up? Having a divided household isn't much fun and I hate to say this, but I understand now why there are so many adult cats in shelters and such. This is insanely difficult and I know for myself in the future I won't be doing this again.