- Joined
- Jul 17, 2018
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Hi all! Looking for some reassurance or advice when adding our new kitten.
We have a 2.5 year old female cat who was the only cat since we rescued her at six months. We recently decided to get a new female kitten who was twelve weeks when we got her.
We had the kitten separated in a separate room for about one week, swapped scents, etc, our resident cat stopped hissing at her. Then over the next week we fed them on either sides of the door and let them take a peek at each other. Most recently, we’ve been having the new kitten come out for 10-15 minutes supervised play with our resident cat.
Our resident cat of course is very concerned with the new family member. She will watch her when she walks around the room, follow her around to see what she’s doing. Our problem is the new kitten wants to play and will attack our resident cat, who then hisses. Our resident cat will also sometimes run over and hiss at the new kitten out of the blue, such as when she was playing with the window cord. Our resident cat has hissed and swatted but hasn’t growled or puffed up. The kitten never hisses, she actually seems pretty submissive, rolling on her back when resident cat swats. They do pretty well eating next to each other and playing parallel, with separate toys and two people.
Is this normal for this point? Our resident cat seems territorial when the new kitten uses scratchers and beds, etc, which I understand is to be expected. Just not sure how much should be going on at this point or for how long.
Any input would be appreciated! Thank you!
We have a 2.5 year old female cat who was the only cat since we rescued her at six months. We recently decided to get a new female kitten who was twelve weeks when we got her.
We had the kitten separated in a separate room for about one week, swapped scents, etc, our resident cat stopped hissing at her. Then over the next week we fed them on either sides of the door and let them take a peek at each other. Most recently, we’ve been having the new kitten come out for 10-15 minutes supervised play with our resident cat.
Our resident cat of course is very concerned with the new family member. She will watch her when she walks around the room, follow her around to see what she’s doing. Our problem is the new kitten wants to play and will attack our resident cat, who then hisses. Our resident cat will also sometimes run over and hiss at the new kitten out of the blue, such as when she was playing with the window cord. Our resident cat has hissed and swatted but hasn’t growled or puffed up. The kitten never hisses, she actually seems pretty submissive, rolling on her back when resident cat swats. They do pretty well eating next to each other and playing parallel, with separate toys and two people.
Is this normal for this point? Our resident cat seems territorial when the new kitten uses scratchers and beds, etc, which I understand is to be expected. Just not sure how much should be going on at this point or for how long.
Any input would be appreciated! Thank you!
Welcome to TCS! And kudos on doing great cat introductions. I think that your duo are working things out well - older kitty is just establishing rules and boundaries. I especially liked that she keeps the kitten from the window cord - such a strangling hazard. The parallel play is very encouraging- "imitation can be the highest form of flattery".
Congrats on the new kitten. 
