- Joined
- Jun 5, 2020
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Hi. We recently adopted a 4 year old feral cat to join our two cats (3 year old female and almost 3 year old male). He was on a one month trial and the day after his trial was over was the day of the most attacks on our other two cats. He is a sweetheart to people once he knows you. He will sometimes climb on my lap. He loved his caretaker, his foster mom and his first adopter. They are aware of what is going on and believe he may need to go to a home with no other cats since we are his second family with issues.
We did what felt like a slow introduction to our other two cats and were a day or two away of letting the second cat in for visits when he broke out. He spent the day out and everything was going pretty well. Our male cat followed him around at first, jumping on furniture and looking down at him. He ended up in the cat tree asleep with our female cat on the landing above him. We were cautiously happy. Once he went back in his room for dinner, we closed the gate and secured our makeshift top to it since all the cats could get over it. The next day, he came through the gate, and we could see how much he needed to be out of the room, so we made it work. I have a diary of every encounter, so I won't bore you with everything, but once both of our resident cats relaxed around him, he went into action. He jumped our female cat and ran her upstairs and it continued into three rooms before our male cat stepped in and she hid and my husband got up there with a spray bottle. She has been living in our bedroom now and he found her twice and "attacked" her there. Our resident male cat just wants to be able to look out the window, but he chases him away from every spot with a window and now just from being downstairs. He gets him cornered and just whacks him over and over. He has even jumped them while they are asleep upstairs. The chair my male cat was sleeping on was a glider, so he got scared and then decided to go for the female cat. The fact that he is feral has its own issues, but we knew he would need time to adjust to being in a home. He was learning about homes already from his fantastic foster. What I did not know was that we cannot pick him up. I am working on getting him used to my hands under his belly, but that is a long way off. So for three or four nights, we all locked ourselves in our bedroom while he had the whole house, but was in his hiding places. We made sure he had a few places to run to when he feels afraid. I know I am leaving out a lot of details, but I could write a book. I did not grow up with cats and we are still learning. We rescued one cat and then another and the process worked well. So we saw a cat who needed a home and brought him to ours.
Right now, he is back in his room. It's the largest bedroom with everything he could ever want. I hang out in there with him a lot and my husband goes in and plays with him. We are trying to go backwards and reintroduce the cats to him. I just started using some of Jackson Galaxy's Peacemaker Solutions. Our resident cats know who he is, but are coming to the gate and we are having snack time together. I am wondering if anyone has advice for our situation. Please be kind. My heart is breaking over this little guy and my other cats are miserable and scared.
We did what felt like a slow introduction to our other two cats and were a day or two away of letting the second cat in for visits when he broke out. He spent the day out and everything was going pretty well. Our male cat followed him around at first, jumping on furniture and looking down at him. He ended up in the cat tree asleep with our female cat on the landing above him. We were cautiously happy. Once he went back in his room for dinner, we closed the gate and secured our makeshift top to it since all the cats could get over it. The next day, he came through the gate, and we could see how much he needed to be out of the room, so we made it work. I have a diary of every encounter, so I won't bore you with everything, but once both of our resident cats relaxed around him, he went into action. He jumped our female cat and ran her upstairs and it continued into three rooms before our male cat stepped in and she hid and my husband got up there with a spray bottle. She has been living in our bedroom now and he found her twice and "attacked" her there. Our resident male cat just wants to be able to look out the window, but he chases him away from every spot with a window and now just from being downstairs. He gets him cornered and just whacks him over and over. He has even jumped them while they are asleep upstairs. The chair my male cat was sleeping on was a glider, so he got scared and then decided to go for the female cat. The fact that he is feral has its own issues, but we knew he would need time to adjust to being in a home. He was learning about homes already from his fantastic foster. What I did not know was that we cannot pick him up. I am working on getting him used to my hands under his belly, but that is a long way off. So for three or four nights, we all locked ourselves in our bedroom while he had the whole house, but was in his hiding places. We made sure he had a few places to run to when he feels afraid. I know I am leaving out a lot of details, but I could write a book. I did not grow up with cats and we are still learning. We rescued one cat and then another and the process worked well. So we saw a cat who needed a home and brought him to ours.
Right now, he is back in his room. It's the largest bedroom with everything he could ever want. I hang out in there with him a lot and my husband goes in and plays with him. We are trying to go backwards and reintroduce the cats to him. I just started using some of Jackson Galaxy's Peacemaker Solutions. Our resident cats know who he is, but are coming to the gate and we are having snack time together. I am wondering if anyone has advice for our situation. Please be kind. My heart is breaking over this little guy and my other cats are miserable and scared.