Kitten/cat intro...is it time now?

[julia123123]

3 1/2 weeks ago, I adopted two now-15 week old kittens. Bonded siblings. I have a resident female here (age 10 - 12). I have kept them completely separated for the entire duration. Kittens have 2 rooms to themselves and get about an hour/day to roam the downstairs while resident cat is sleeping upstairs.

Resident cat reaction: in the beginning, she went to the baby gate where kittens were and hissed. Just occasionally. Now she generally ignores them, although when she's seen me holding a kitten, she has hissed. And yesterday, when one of the kittens got loose, she watched kitten approach her in a meandering way and ran upstairs. She seems a little bit nervous around them.

Kitten reaction: kittens don't even seem to realize that there's another cat here! They've seen Calliope through the gate but have had zero reaction.

Since I'm approaching the one-month point and the kittens are almost 4 months old, I thought that it might be time to let them loose in the house. I'm blocking off the upstairs so that Calliope won't be bothered (still working out how I can block THEM out without blocking HER in). She was declawed by a previous owner, so I definitely want to protect her from rambunctious kittens. I had a VERY miserable cat intro last year and I want this one to be more successful. Do all signs point to letting them all be together (supervised and only during the day, kittens in their own room at night)?

I'd love any advice!

 

[ArtNJ]

All signs point to a relatively typical reaction from a 10 year old cat to kittens However, I don't think stretching the intro out past a month is going to do any good. At a certain point, you need to let them work it out. And they will. Probably quite slowly, with some stress on the older cat. Which sucks, but its fairly common when introducing a senior cat to kittens. I don't think a months long process eliminates the issues at the end . . . just delays them. Still, if you want to supervise for a bit, can't see any real harm in that. At a certain point, kittens get perceived as adults, which can be unhelpful, but you should have some time.

 

[Tobermory]

Do all signs point to letting them all be together (supervised and only during the day, kittens in their own room at night)?

Given what you've described, that sounds like a good next step. That worked for me when I introduced two, three-month-old kittens to my then seven-year-old boy, Max. Just know that although they may have ignored Calliope in the past, that probably won't continue to be the case. While Iris and Lily spent a lot of time curled up or playing together, they also spent a lot of time chasing Max and annoying the heck out of him. He hissed and ran (and they chased), but that wasn't surprising. He eventually put his paw down with them (and on them), and they learned a bit of respect. Shutting them up at night and letting him have us to himself helped him adjust.

 

[julia123123]

Last night, I let them all out together. Calliope on chair. Kittens staring. The smaller, sweeter kitten hung back and watched. The larger, more aggressive kitten approached cautiously. Calliope hissed. Kitten ignored, jumped up on chair with her (seemed to be curious, not aggressive). She hissed and growled, fled to the couch. I went ahead and put kittens up at that point. It didn't seem like a great intro to me, but my husband said that he felt like kittens were just curious. She went upstairs, but as soon as kittens were put up, she came back downstairs and was perfectly friendly/normal. I guess it's just going to be small bits of time together, gradually increased!

 

[di and bob]

Hissing, growling, and swatting are all perfectly normal. Females are the limit setters, the manners teachers. If she pins one of the kittens down, or swats them, watch their reactions, if they shortly come back for more, all is normal and they are not getting hurt. If she is truly hurting them, they will leave the room when she comes in, or hide from her.

 

[ArtNJ]

If you took a poll of folks on this forum that had bff cats and asked how many hissed and growled when first introduced, the answer would probably be somewhere between 50-80%. A little hissing and growling is nothing.

With a ten year old in the mix, you are just not going to be able to do some perfect introduction process that gets them past this stage. They will need to work through this, and it may take quite a while. In fact, with a ten year old, its possible and perhaps likely that he will ALWAYS hiss/growl a bit when the kittens actively seek to play with him (aka bugging him). (Think of a grump old man yelling at neighbor kids to "get off my lawn!" -- thats basically all it is at that point.) You might be able to do better, but the realistic goal is for him to be chill when they are not actively bugging him -- and it can take a bit to get there *after* the intro process.

 

[julia123123]

Oh, I can tell that she's annoyed. The whole reason I adopted TWO kittens is that ONE kitten would run her ragged. I wanted to get kittens instead of adult cats so that she wouldn't feel as threatened. She still has the run of the house all night and all morning, and only has to deal with annoying kittens in the afternoon. Hopefully she puts them in their place!

 

[di and bob]

You did absolutely right, two kittens have each other to play with and will hopefully not be too annoying to your girl. She's ruffled right now, but eventually will form a family unit with the kittens. They will keep her entertained!

 

[ArtNJ]

I feel pretty strongly that two kittens is not an automatic improvement. When we adopted sibling kittens with an older cat, it turned out that one kitten was just unusually chill, while the other was typically hyper. The older cat got along swimmingly with chill kitten and always disliked the hyper kitten. When hyper kitten turned one, the older cat started growling/hissing more forcefully, perhaps because of the kitten's adult size or perhaps there was a mild injury. A switch flipped and the hyper kitten was like "you growl at me??? Then you die." We never solved it. Anyway, the tail end of that story is a rare thing, but the beginning is, I feel, a lesson. Two kittens is two opportunities to have a hyper PITA, and there is no guarranty they tire each other out and don't bug the older cat. It isn't twice as likely to be a problem -- but it isn't necessarily less likely to be a problem either. Anyway, you'll just have to wait and see.

 

[julia123123]

So far, it's going well. I have the exact same situation - a super hyper and a super chill kitten. I let them house-roam for a couple of hours yesterday. Resident cat, Calliope, sat in the window and watched. Both cats approached separately a couple of times, she hissed, they backed off, then completely ignored her. She stayed in the window for at least 20 minutes and then ran upstairs because of some other loud noise. Phew...so far, so good! Here she is, laying down the law!