2 new kitties

[blackcat416]

Tomorrow I pick up 2 more fur balls. 1 is a 3 month old female kitten and the other is a 10 year old male cat. Here is my game plan. I have gotten a new liter box, food, etc and I plan on putting the cats in my bedroom. Or at least the kitten has to go in there since she is being neutered today. Then I was going to introduce my other 6 one at a time to the cats. Just for a couple of minutes to get the hissing and growling out of the way. My normal routine is just to introduce them all at once in the living room but after I pick them up from the shelter tomorrow we go right to my vet for a blood work up and full exam. But since the male is 10 and has no front claws I wanted to do a one on one with each. Just to make sure no on tries to hurt him. All of my 6 have their claws but they are constantly kept short. My 6 range in age from 2 to 20. With the 20 year old only living with us for 3 years, when she came to live with us, she wasn't even fixed and she growls at everybody, she just prefers to be left alone and sleep all the time. I am a little afraid of the kitten who will still be sore from the neutering today. I would like to hear other suggestions or what you have done on introducing a new cat to a multi-cat house. They are all indoor cats, 3 boys/3 girls. Soon to be 4 and 4. We live in a row home in a Philadelphia. Also feel free to suggest names the 3 month kitten is black and the 10 years is gray with some tabby, he is not a feral cat he lived with seniors that could no longer care for him. They called him gato which means cat in Italian. Thank you.

 

[mservant]

I am thinking you may have introduced your existing household cats in the same way that you are proposing, but if you haven't looked at the Articles on this site about managing introductions they may give you some ideas for phasing it a little more and maximising the chances of things going smoothly.

I have included links here for introducuing cats from this site plus one from International Cat Care so you can compare.  Both look primarily at introducing small numbers of cats but consider this along with your own ideas of the one to one introductions you have already thought about.  The other link is on multi cat households as this looks at some of the issues of managing all the different personalities and needs of your cats, which I think you are already aware of but worth thinking about in relation to your two newcomers.

Given the risks of high anxiety for all of your cats if the introductions are rushed I suggest you look at a more phased introduction than you have been thinking about.  I appreciate this can be difficult in terms of the space you have and how many cats you need to share your time around, but low stress is definitely what you want to aim for.

As for name suggestions, others on the site have started threads in the Cat Lounge asking for suggestions, and there are also threads for unusual, and favourite cat names. Here is the one for favourite ones :  http://www.thecatsite.com/t/256566/great-cats-names

http://www.thecatsite.com/a/introducing-cats-to-cats

http://www.cats.org.uk//southbham/cats-in-crisis/how-to-introduce-cats/

http://www.thecatsite.com/a/the-multi-cat-household

I hope you get some more suggestions and ideas from members who have gone through this experience and can tell you how it went for them.