Hello,
I'm a single person living in a studio apartment in a major city. I have a cat who I adopted two years ago at a big adoption event. She's 8 now. She's not very high energy but loves to sit on my lap while I watch TV or use the computer. We get along pretty well with just the two of us.
Since I'm out for much of the day, she's usually home alone. I've been thinking of getting her a companion, specifically a certain 9 year old cat who was abandoned by her owner when the owner moved from a house to a small apartment and had to give up some of her cats. I feel bad because it's clear this cat was not one of the ones she picked, and at 9 years old she's going to have a hard time getting adopted.
The problem is I don't really know how my current cat would react to a newcomer. I think she's kind of a scardy cat because she trembles whenever we go anywhere, gets nervous when she hears people out in the hall, runs away from bugs, and was very quiet and depressed-looking at the big auction event I got her from. But I don't really know how she'd react to other cats because I've never seen her with any aside from one time she was making low-meow sounds at a stray outside the window. The last thing I want to do is put her in a situation where she would feel uncomfortable or even threatened by a new cat.
Making matters worse, since it's a studio apartment, I can't really keep them seperated during the introductory stage. There's a bathroom, but it's very small and I'd basically have to put the litter box in the sink. There's also closets, but they're also small, and my cat's actually clever enough to slide the doors open and get in anyhow if she wants.
Every guide in existence says you should keep new cats separate for a few days, but I don't think I have that option, and I'm no cat expert so I can't always correctly interpret signs that there's an issue. What should I do?
I'm a single person living in a studio apartment in a major city. I have a cat who I adopted two years ago at a big adoption event. She's 8 now. She's not very high energy but loves to sit on my lap while I watch TV or use the computer. We get along pretty well with just the two of us.
Since I'm out for much of the day, she's usually home alone. I've been thinking of getting her a companion, specifically a certain 9 year old cat who was abandoned by her owner when the owner moved from a house to a small apartment and had to give up some of her cats. I feel bad because it's clear this cat was not one of the ones she picked, and at 9 years old she's going to have a hard time getting adopted.
The problem is I don't really know how my current cat would react to a newcomer. I think she's kind of a scardy cat because she trembles whenever we go anywhere, gets nervous when she hears people out in the hall, runs away from bugs, and was very quiet and depressed-looking at the big auction event I got her from. But I don't really know how she'd react to other cats because I've never seen her with any aside from one time she was making low-meow sounds at a stray outside the window. The last thing I want to do is put her in a situation where she would feel uncomfortable or even threatened by a new cat.
Making matters worse, since it's a studio apartment, I can't really keep them seperated during the introductory stage. There's a bathroom, but it's very small and I'd basically have to put the litter box in the sink. There's also closets, but they're also small, and my cat's actually clever enough to slide the doors open and get in anyhow if she wants.
Every guide in existence says you should keep new cats separate for a few days, but I don't think I have that option, and I'm no cat expert so I can't always correctly interpret signs that there's an issue. What should I do?