Hello everyone,
Sorry in advance for the novella.
While I've read the articles here on the site on cat introductions, which were very helpful, along with the many related forum posts, I feel like I'm having a hard time introducing my two cats . I just wanted to see if anyone had any additional advice or could just reassure me.
Back in September, my partner and I, as first-time cat owners, adopted a 1-year-old cat we'll call K.
K turned out to be relatively low maintenance with very good kitty manners, which I consider lucky, except for one thing - it's very hard to get her to expend enough energy because she only engages with wand toys.
We thought we could get her a friend so they could be active together, and after reading about introductions we figured it would be relatively safe to adopt another cat due to K's young age. We were looking for another 1-year-old but ended up with a 6-month-old.
We'll call the younger cat T, and we adopted her in mid-October.
T is very sweet but is also very shy/skittish/scared/nervous (we're working on that). T ended up staying a full three weeks inside her safe room before showing any indication that she wanted out.
During those three weeks we discovered that K has her own anxiety problems. T's room was originally K's safe room and the litter box K preferred to use was inside - of course we moved it when the room was to become T's. (K was spending no time in the room other than to use the litter box, so we didn't feel like we were taking the room away from her.)
I put K's litter box as close to the old location as possible so as not to disrupt her routine, outside of the safe room, which is located on the second floor of our home.
Everything seemed alright until a few days later when K suddenly started acting very strangely in the evening, meowing at us and running around, different from "zooming". TMI warning: I then found a glob of what looked to be blood and mucus on the stairs, so we rushed her to the vet immediately and was told it was probably stress-induced colitis.
The lightbulb in my head didn't go off until the next day when K still hadn't pooped yet and we were worried - I moved the litter box downstairs and voila - immediate usage from K. So it seems that she was very stressed about her litter box being near the mystery newcomer.
As the days went by, we attempted scent exchanges with socks, towels, blankets, and both cats sniffed but didn't really react otherwise, which we took as a good sign. But as more time passed, the less K would venture upstairs...at first K would hunker down occasionally outside T's door. T sometimes stuck her paws out but K would hiss and swat at them before removing herself from the situation (going back downstairs). We gave them treats when they were both at the door and later opened the door a crack a few times, but K did more hissing, growling, and swatting. We would have kept trying with cracking the door but K stopped going upstairs.
We tried to feed them (their wet food) on opposite sides of the door to the safe room but K is usually fed downstairs in the kitchen, so for her to eat near T she has to go quite far away from her usual place. Again, at first, it seemed to be going well and we were encouraged that K would eat relatively close to the door (maybe a foot away), but again as time passed she would only take a few bites of her portion before leaving, eventually refusing to go upstairs at all for her food. T on the other hand eats anything, anywhere, at light speed, so at least we didn't have to worry about two cats acting this way.
We decided that it wasn't worth the additional stress to K to keep trying to force her to eat upstairs, and she settled back into a routine of eating downstairs.
Our home can only really be separated into "upstairs" and "downstairs", nothing really in between. We figured the next step would be to set up a barrier or gate of some sort at the base of our steps so that T could explore outside her room (upstairs + staircase) and K could actually see T (because she stopped going upstairs, they were having no contact at all). We skipped the territory swap because at the time, both cats (especially T) were carrier-shy but T was really trying to get out of her room so we needed to give her more space.
We've been doing "gate time" since the middle of November, at least one session a day, usually more. T is enclosed in her safe room all other times (we visit her when we can during the day). We play with both of them as much as we can and try to give lots of treats when they are near each other at the gate, however K has consistently hissed and swatted at T. Sometimes it's just one swipe, sometimes she is more aggressive and is vocalizing while pawing (longest continuous time would be about five seconds - don't know if that's long or not). K especially reacts if T is given a treat too close to her.
K meows pitifully at us while looking anxiously back and forth between us and T, usually shortly before she paws at T, but we don't know how to reassure her other than to give her treats. She doesn't really like to be pet in general and especially won't allow it when T is around, so we're not very flush with positive reinforcement options.
T has been pretty chill. She trills/chirps at K, seemingly to say hello, lies down within reach (both cats are able to stick their paws/arms through the chicken wire of the "gate"), never aggressive. She seems to be very curious about K and it looks like she wants to be friends. At times T will put up her paws and K will swipe aggressively, but T thinks they're playing...?
They have had only one possible nose touch, I wasn't sitting quite in view and it was very short, but no aggression during it. Another promising recent event was K lying down facing away from the gate, slowly swishing her tail - T tried to paw at it and K turned her head to watch her do it multiple times without reacting (until the last time when T made a more serious attempt, K then turned, swatted, and hissed before walking away).
On the other hand, T is beginning to exhibit new signs of wariness around K, dashing back up the stairs if K looks or breathes more loudly in her direction...being much more hesitant with eating treats if they are within paw-reach of K.
We've tried Nature's Miracle calming spray, which doesn't seem to do much of anything, and as of three days ago we've plugged in a Feliway Multi-Cat diffuser (unplugging it at night). At least on the first night it seemed to make K even more anxious - she was stalking low around sniffing everywhere, it looked like she might have thought there was another cat around? But we'll wait at least a week to see if it makes a difference.
With K actively avoiding anything to do with T it's very difficult to encourage them to interact. It's really starting to take a toll on us that we have to keep them separated like this, because it just eats up all of our time - basically one of us is with either cat at any given time, because we don't want them to feel neglected in any way. It's also harder on T because she's shut in the room the majority of the time but loves company - it's just not possible for us to do most things in her room. I'm not sure what else we could do and the longer we wait, the more antsy T gets. She has essentially spent a month and a half inside that one room, so that's understandable.
Does anyone have any additional advice or suggestions for things we could try? Are there other "in between" steps? (We tried a territory swap this past weekend but it didn't go as expected, I won't include the story here as my post is already way too long!)
When do we know to try meeting without the gate?
Thanks very much for reading! I'm attaching pictures of K (white) and T (black) for your time.
Sorry in advance for the novella.
While I've read the articles here on the site on cat introductions, which were very helpful, along with the many related forum posts, I feel like I'm having a hard time introducing my two cats . I just wanted to see if anyone had any additional advice or could just reassure me.
Back in September, my partner and I, as first-time cat owners, adopted a 1-year-old cat we'll call K.
K turned out to be relatively low maintenance with very good kitty manners, which I consider lucky, except for one thing - it's very hard to get her to expend enough energy because she only engages with wand toys.
We thought we could get her a friend so they could be active together, and after reading about introductions we figured it would be relatively safe to adopt another cat due to K's young age. We were looking for another 1-year-old but ended up with a 6-month-old.
We'll call the younger cat T, and we adopted her in mid-October.
T is very sweet but is also very shy/skittish/scared/nervous (we're working on that). T ended up staying a full three weeks inside her safe room before showing any indication that she wanted out.
During those three weeks we discovered that K has her own anxiety problems. T's room was originally K's safe room and the litter box K preferred to use was inside - of course we moved it when the room was to become T's. (K was spending no time in the room other than to use the litter box, so we didn't feel like we were taking the room away from her.)
I put K's litter box as close to the old location as possible so as not to disrupt her routine, outside of the safe room, which is located on the second floor of our home.
Everything seemed alright until a few days later when K suddenly started acting very strangely in the evening, meowing at us and running around, different from "zooming". TMI warning: I then found a glob of what looked to be blood and mucus on the stairs, so we rushed her to the vet immediately and was told it was probably stress-induced colitis.
The lightbulb in my head didn't go off until the next day when K still hadn't pooped yet and we were worried - I moved the litter box downstairs and voila - immediate usage from K. So it seems that she was very stressed about her litter box being near the mystery newcomer.
As the days went by, we attempted scent exchanges with socks, towels, blankets, and both cats sniffed but didn't really react otherwise, which we took as a good sign. But as more time passed, the less K would venture upstairs...at first K would hunker down occasionally outside T's door. T sometimes stuck her paws out but K would hiss and swat at them before removing herself from the situation (going back downstairs). We gave them treats when they were both at the door and later opened the door a crack a few times, but K did more hissing, growling, and swatting. We would have kept trying with cracking the door but K stopped going upstairs.
We tried to feed them (their wet food) on opposite sides of the door to the safe room but K is usually fed downstairs in the kitchen, so for her to eat near T she has to go quite far away from her usual place. Again, at first, it seemed to be going well and we were encouraged that K would eat relatively close to the door (maybe a foot away), but again as time passed she would only take a few bites of her portion before leaving, eventually refusing to go upstairs at all for her food. T on the other hand eats anything, anywhere, at light speed, so at least we didn't have to worry about two cats acting this way.
We decided that it wasn't worth the additional stress to K to keep trying to force her to eat upstairs, and she settled back into a routine of eating downstairs.
Our home can only really be separated into "upstairs" and "downstairs", nothing really in between. We figured the next step would be to set up a barrier or gate of some sort at the base of our steps so that T could explore outside her room (upstairs + staircase) and K could actually see T (because she stopped going upstairs, they were having no contact at all). We skipped the territory swap because at the time, both cats (especially T) were carrier-shy but T was really trying to get out of her room so we needed to give her more space.
We've been doing "gate time" since the middle of November, at least one session a day, usually more. T is enclosed in her safe room all other times (we visit her when we can during the day). We play with both of them as much as we can and try to give lots of treats when they are near each other at the gate, however K has consistently hissed and swatted at T. Sometimes it's just one swipe, sometimes she is more aggressive and is vocalizing while pawing (longest continuous time would be about five seconds - don't know if that's long or not). K especially reacts if T is given a treat too close to her.
K meows pitifully at us while looking anxiously back and forth between us and T, usually shortly before she paws at T, but we don't know how to reassure her other than to give her treats. She doesn't really like to be pet in general and especially won't allow it when T is around, so we're not very flush with positive reinforcement options.
T has been pretty chill. She trills/chirps at K, seemingly to say hello, lies down within reach (both cats are able to stick their paws/arms through the chicken wire of the "gate"), never aggressive. She seems to be very curious about K and it looks like she wants to be friends. At times T will put up her paws and K will swipe aggressively, but T thinks they're playing...?
They have had only one possible nose touch, I wasn't sitting quite in view and it was very short, but no aggression during it. Another promising recent event was K lying down facing away from the gate, slowly swishing her tail - T tried to paw at it and K turned her head to watch her do it multiple times without reacting (until the last time when T made a more serious attempt, K then turned, swatted, and hissed before walking away).
On the other hand, T is beginning to exhibit new signs of wariness around K, dashing back up the stairs if K looks or breathes more loudly in her direction...being much more hesitant with eating treats if they are within paw-reach of K.
We've tried Nature's Miracle calming spray, which doesn't seem to do much of anything, and as of three days ago we've plugged in a Feliway Multi-Cat diffuser (unplugging it at night). At least on the first night it seemed to make K even more anxious - she was stalking low around sniffing everywhere, it looked like she might have thought there was another cat around? But we'll wait at least a week to see if it makes a difference.
With K actively avoiding anything to do with T it's very difficult to encourage them to interact. It's really starting to take a toll on us that we have to keep them separated like this, because it just eats up all of our time - basically one of us is with either cat at any given time, because we don't want them to feel neglected in any way. It's also harder on T because she's shut in the room the majority of the time but loves company - it's just not possible for us to do most things in her room. I'm not sure what else we could do and the longer we wait, the more antsy T gets. She has essentially spent a month and a half inside that one room, so that's understandable.
Does anyone have any additional advice or suggestions for things we could try? Are there other "in between" steps? (We tried a territory swap this past weekend but it didn't go as expected, I won't include the story here as my post is already way too long!)
When do we know to try meeting without the gate?
Thanks very much for reading! I'm attaching pictures of K (white) and T (black) for your time.