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- Jun 25, 2018
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i finished grad school a little over a year ago and adopted my first (personal) cat when a moved, a beautiful tabby kitten named murray who has been my best buddy since. i've had cats growing up, mostly females, and when we got new kittens in my family, they were always just...unceremoniously dumped in with the resident cats. i've read a lot of articles and watched a lot of video, so when i wanted to introduce a second kitten, i knew I wasn't going to do that, as my cats growing up were never truly violent with one another, but none of them were ever really friends, either (which i realize might not happen even with a good introduction, but i figured it would make things easier and more likely? possibly? anyway, i just wanted to be safe).
long story short, i have a year and 2 month-ish old neutered male (murray) and i recently adopted a 9 week old female kitten (rooney). i've had the kitten about a week now and have been doing the slow introduction process. when i first brought her home, she had her own "safe space" in the spare bedroom of my two-bedroom apartment complete with food, water, litter box, and a plethora of toys. for the first two days, i left that door closed, though murray, a playful, outgoing, and cuddly male was naturally curious and ended up sitting outside of the closed door for periods of time. i've also been feeding them their wet food twice daily on opposite sides of the door with no problems. i also had them site-swap for a bit of time over the last couple of days with no incident.
over the last week, i've installed stacked pet gates (at first i only had two of the small ones, but rooney is a climber and literally scaled them and escaped on me while i was feeding them). murray is still as affectionate as ever with me, climbing up on my lap while i'm in the living room and sleeping with me at night, though he has been sticking his paw between the wire/mesh and occasionally swats at rooney (she's doing the same, and no claws). there is occasional hissing, but he's actually stopped. most of the hissing comes from rooney, now, and only intermittently. most of the time they are both calm and exist on either side of the gates without trouble.
...so i figured i'd try a supervised, controlled, and timed interaction. i don't know if this is "normal" or should be a red flag. murray chased the kitten almost immediately after she set foot out of her safe space and he was swatting at her. no blood or fur flying, so to speak, and rooney would flop over on her back in submission most of the time, though perhaps 1/4th of the time she would hiss, growl, and puff up a bit, though she never really reacted back at him physically. it didn't seem to bother her at all, and she spent about half an hour exploring the dining room, kitchen, and living room (i kept the bathroom/other bedroom doors closed to not overwhelm her).
there were periods where they would both play with separate stringed toys without incident, but eventually, murray would notice rooney and chase her again, sometimes behind the couch, to swat at her. again, never drew blood or even had his claws out, but it did seem to scare rooney enough to stay hidden until i could redirect murray with a toy. she would always come back out for more playtime, and i led her back to her room during one of the periods they were both laying down and playing with the same spinning mouse toy, trying to create good associations.
is this all pretty normal behavior on the part of my resident cat? even though we didn't introduce our family cats this way growing up, we really only had some hissing and running away on the resident cats' parts, never anything like the chasing/swatting. i guess it could just be murray telling her he's the "boss", especially because he never even really vocalizes while doing it, but i guess i'm just looking for advice or guidance on how to proceed. would short times of interaction daily still be okay from your guys' point of view?
here they are by the way:
long story short, i have a year and 2 month-ish old neutered male (murray) and i recently adopted a 9 week old female kitten (rooney). i've had the kitten about a week now and have been doing the slow introduction process. when i first brought her home, she had her own "safe space" in the spare bedroom of my two-bedroom apartment complete with food, water, litter box, and a plethora of toys. for the first two days, i left that door closed, though murray, a playful, outgoing, and cuddly male was naturally curious and ended up sitting outside of the closed door for periods of time. i've also been feeding them their wet food twice daily on opposite sides of the door with no problems. i also had them site-swap for a bit of time over the last couple of days with no incident.
over the last week, i've installed stacked pet gates (at first i only had two of the small ones, but rooney is a climber and literally scaled them and escaped on me while i was feeding them). murray is still as affectionate as ever with me, climbing up on my lap while i'm in the living room and sleeping with me at night, though he has been sticking his paw between the wire/mesh and occasionally swats at rooney (she's doing the same, and no claws). there is occasional hissing, but he's actually stopped. most of the hissing comes from rooney, now, and only intermittently. most of the time they are both calm and exist on either side of the gates without trouble.
...so i figured i'd try a supervised, controlled, and timed interaction. i don't know if this is "normal" or should be a red flag. murray chased the kitten almost immediately after she set foot out of her safe space and he was swatting at her. no blood or fur flying, so to speak, and rooney would flop over on her back in submission most of the time, though perhaps 1/4th of the time she would hiss, growl, and puff up a bit, though she never really reacted back at him physically. it didn't seem to bother her at all, and she spent about half an hour exploring the dining room, kitchen, and living room (i kept the bathroom/other bedroom doors closed to not overwhelm her).
there were periods where they would both play with separate stringed toys without incident, but eventually, murray would notice rooney and chase her again, sometimes behind the couch, to swat at her. again, never drew blood or even had his claws out, but it did seem to scare rooney enough to stay hidden until i could redirect murray with a toy. she would always come back out for more playtime, and i led her back to her room during one of the periods they were both laying down and playing with the same spinning mouse toy, trying to create good associations.
is this all pretty normal behavior on the part of my resident cat? even though we didn't introduce our family cats this way growing up, we really only had some hissing and running away on the resident cats' parts, never anything like the chasing/swatting. i guess it could just be murray telling her he's the "boss", especially because he never even really vocalizes while doing it, but i guess i'm just looking for advice or guidance on how to proceed. would short times of interaction daily still be okay from your guys' point of view?
here they are by the way:
Murray sounds like a playful cat who's already on the path to accepting Rooney into the household. You'll probably see some tackling and biting of the nape or other body parts, and even if Rooney hisses or squeals that's just her telling Murray to not bite so hard and nothing to worry about unless you're seeing fur missing or blood.
