This thread is about trying to determine what age/sex/type of cat to adopt for another cat that lost its sibling. If you are a in rush, skip to the last paragraph. I am especially grateful for responses from "cat specialists", vets, animal behavior experts or those that were in a similar situation and can provide some much needed advice.
I will try to keep the sad story short - I found these 2 female kittens
abandoned in a ditch, while living in another country for a short while (Cyprus, its a small country where the population of cats, mostly feral and/or abandoned cats is 2x the number of people), and it was love at first site, we intended to find a home for them as we did for few other cats while living there, but of course we never were able to, so by the time they were about 1 year old or so, we moved out to another country. Some 2 years later, this April, our beautiful, gentle kitty Palermo, suddenly succumbed to an autoimmune disease and despite treatment and seeing different vets/animal hospital, within less than 2 weeks after any symptoms she was suddenly gone. Her sibling, Corleone, has coped better than we expected, in the sense that although she was a bit less active for a few days, still played, ate normally, etc., partly I guess because she is so attached to us, sometimes I think she probably believes herself to be a human rather than a cat.
She is especially fond of my wife and likes to cuddle her all the time, snuggle in her face, lets her pick her up all the time, while I'm more of her play buddy. As we both have jobs and my wife is soon going back to a more full time job, we are now thinking of Corleone's well-being spending a big part of the day alone (we live in a flat), and we are considering adopting another cat for her company and ours. While they were together they were fierce-fully playful with each other, "tearing down the house" kind of playing, chasing each other and running/jumping about. Corleone still is very active, we play chase with her, she knows how to fetch sticks as well
plus she's got a ton of toys, but still of course its not the same as when she had her beautiful sister, and I'm sure deep inside she missed on all that action, not to mention their long sessions of licking each other (she sometimes comes by us and starts licking us affectionately for a short while until she sort of realizes something's not right, this she never used to do while her sister was around 
We already decided we most definitely would never "buy" a cat from the pet store, we will surely adopt one, but we are having difficulties trying to consider how to best match a cat so as to reduce any chance of "non-compatibility". Corleone is a 3 year old cat, extremely playful and mindful of us, she rarely ever likes to spend too much time by herself if we're around. Our thoughts so far, but without any "facts" to back it up was to consider getting a young cat, not a kitten, but maybe 6mo to 2 year old or so, on account of Corleone being always so active and demanding a ton of playfulness at all times
but at the same time I'm almost certain there will be some degree of jealousy towards the newcomer in the beginning at least, so we would like to minimize that as best as we can. We read that young male cats, especially if neutered are generally more mild-mannered than females, but I'm pretty sure it probably depends more on each cats personality as well. So if you have some advice, like what to look for in behavior/traits of the potential newcomer, although I realize it will be quite difficult to observe much on a short encounter, will be very-very helpful for us.
Corleone says hi (she's the all-black kitty) and I've attached a couple of photos of her beautiful sister we lost and miss so much
, Palermo 
she was a tuxedo kitty, the most graceful and gentle cat I've ever seen, very different from her sister outside of their playing sessions when both went a bit bonkers.
Thanks for reading and for letting us share their/our story.
And a couple of "baby pics", from the very first day I found them, and few weeks later.
I will try to keep the sad story short - I found these 2 female kittens
abandoned in a ditch, while living in another country for a short while (Cyprus, its a small country where the population of cats, mostly feral and/or abandoned cats is 2x the number of people), and it was love at first site, we intended to find a home for them as we did for few other cats while living there, but of course we never were able to, so by the time they were about 1 year old or so, we moved out to another country. Some 2 years later, this April, our beautiful, gentle kitty Palermo, suddenly succumbed to an autoimmune disease and despite treatment and seeing different vets/animal hospital, within less than 2 weeks after any symptoms she was suddenly gone. Her sibling, Corleone, has coped better than we expected, in the sense that although she was a bit less active for a few days, still played, ate normally, etc., partly I guess because she is so attached to us, sometimes I think she probably believes herself to be a human rather than a cat. She is especially fond of my wife and likes to cuddle her all the time, snuggle in her face, lets her pick her up all the time, while I'm more of her play buddy. As we both have jobs and my wife is soon going back to a more full time job, we are now thinking of Corleone's well-being spending a big part of the day alone (we live in a flat), and we are considering adopting another cat for her company and ours. While they were together they were fierce-fully playful with each other, "tearing down the house" kind of playing, chasing each other and running/jumping about. Corleone still is very active, we play chase with her, she knows how to fetch sticks as well
plus she's got a ton of toys, but still of course its not the same as when she had her beautiful sister, and I'm sure deep inside she missed on all that action, not to mention their long sessions of licking each other (she sometimes comes by us and starts licking us affectionately for a short while until she sort of realizes something's not right, this she never used to do while her sister was around We already decided we most definitely would never "buy" a cat from the pet store, we will surely adopt one, but we are having difficulties trying to consider how to best match a cat so as to reduce any chance of "non-compatibility". Corleone is a 3 year old cat, extremely playful and mindful of us, she rarely ever likes to spend too much time by herself if we're around. Our thoughts so far, but without any "facts" to back it up was to consider getting a young cat, not a kitten, but maybe 6mo to 2 year old or so, on account of Corleone being always so active and demanding a ton of playfulness at all times
but at the same time I'm almost certain there will be some degree of jealousy towards the newcomer in the beginning at least, so we would like to minimize that as best as we can. We read that young male cats, especially if neutered are generally more mild-mannered than females, but I'm pretty sure it probably depends more on each cats personality as well. So if you have some advice, like what to look for in behavior/traits of the potential newcomer, although I realize it will be quite difficult to observe much on a short encounter, will be very-very helpful for us.Corleone says hi (she's the all-black kitty) and I've attached a couple of photos of her beautiful sister we lost and miss so much
, Palermo she was a tuxedo kitty, the most graceful and gentle cat I've ever seen, very different from her sister outside of their playing sessions when both went a bit bonkers.Thanks for reading and for letting us share their/our story.
And a couple of "baby pics", from the very first day I found them, and few weeks later.
thank you for sharing your beautiful journey...
