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- Mar 9, 2017
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Hello, my wife and I have become very frustrated and discouraged getting our cats(mostly the resident cat) to get along. I'll try and list any details that would help. We feel like we have tried what our vet and what some online articles have told us with no success.
We currently have two male cats in our house. They are both neutered. There is Badger, our resident cat, who we rescued just about a year ago. He is two years old and is a sweetheart who loves to be on our laps whenever we are home. Before we rescued him, we noticed he was constantly being bullied by other stray cats and was very skinny due to not having access to food the other cats had. It's very clear to us that he had never had a home before and is learning how to be an indoor cat.
Two months ago we adopted Ghost, he is around two years old. He is always playful and normally does everything at 100%. He is not a lap cat and likes to do his own thing most of time. He appears to have been an indoor cat already and is used to being around other cats. He normally pays zero attention to Badger.
We started by only having them smell each other at meal times under a door, then gradually feeding them on opposite sides of a screen door. They never have any issues during meal times. After awhile we had them meet and Ghost went right up to Badger to say hi and sniff him only to have Badger get all puffy and charge at Ghost. Since then every time we have had them meet, Badger will get all puffy and charge Ghost. Badger will normally stop a few feet from Ghost and let out very loud and threatening meows and slowly creep closer or sneak around behind Ghost to get to him. Ghost is now scared every time Badger does this and just tries to hide. The problem is Badger will not leave him alone and will continue to stalk and attack Ghost until we step in. Ghost never ever does anything except hide, hiss, growl and meow back at Badger when Badger gets close.
Once they are separated, Badger is back to his loving self. We have started over with the introduction process several times with little to show for it. The cats also will try to reach under doors with their paws and hit the other cat on the other side of the door. Badger will occasionally scratch and try to open the doors to get into Ghost's room. We have also observed several times in the room beside Ghost's safe room Badger spraying. We have found one of Ghost's cat beds to have been sprayed on several times as well. Ghost uses all three litter boxes with no problems, Badger has peed a handful of times in the litter box in Ghost's room.
We have just been keeping them in separate parts of the house right now but we feel really bad for Ghost because he is always meowing to have the door opened. We also don't want to keep stressing Badger out.
We are not sure this is a male territory issue or something else but we are pretty discouraged and would prefer to not have to be always worrying about where the two cats are and making sure they don't interact. I know that sometimes there a cats that just do better when they are the only cat but we don't want to give up on having the new guy in our house. Is there any hope to get Badger to accept the new addition to our house? We would appreciate if anyone has any advice or success stories from going through a situation like this. Thank you for reading this. We think our boys are cute so I have a picture of both of them for you to see! Badger first then Ghost.
We currently have two male cats in our house. They are both neutered. There is Badger, our resident cat, who we rescued just about a year ago. He is two years old and is a sweetheart who loves to be on our laps whenever we are home. Before we rescued him, we noticed he was constantly being bullied by other stray cats and was very skinny due to not having access to food the other cats had. It's very clear to us that he had never had a home before and is learning how to be an indoor cat.
Two months ago we adopted Ghost, he is around two years old. He is always playful and normally does everything at 100%. He is not a lap cat and likes to do his own thing most of time. He appears to have been an indoor cat already and is used to being around other cats. He normally pays zero attention to Badger.
We started by only having them smell each other at meal times under a door, then gradually feeding them on opposite sides of a screen door. They never have any issues during meal times. After awhile we had them meet and Ghost went right up to Badger to say hi and sniff him only to have Badger get all puffy and charge at Ghost. Since then every time we have had them meet, Badger will get all puffy and charge Ghost. Badger will normally stop a few feet from Ghost and let out very loud and threatening meows and slowly creep closer or sneak around behind Ghost to get to him. Ghost is now scared every time Badger does this and just tries to hide. The problem is Badger will not leave him alone and will continue to stalk and attack Ghost until we step in. Ghost never ever does anything except hide, hiss, growl and meow back at Badger when Badger gets close.
Once they are separated, Badger is back to his loving self. We have started over with the introduction process several times with little to show for it. The cats also will try to reach under doors with their paws and hit the other cat on the other side of the door. Badger will occasionally scratch and try to open the doors to get into Ghost's room. We have also observed several times in the room beside Ghost's safe room Badger spraying. We have found one of Ghost's cat beds to have been sprayed on several times as well. Ghost uses all three litter boxes with no problems, Badger has peed a handful of times in the litter box in Ghost's room.
We have just been keeping them in separate parts of the house right now but we feel really bad for Ghost because he is always meowing to have the door opened. We also don't want to keep stressing Badger out.
We are not sure this is a male territory issue or something else but we are pretty discouraged and would prefer to not have to be always worrying about where the two cats are and making sure they don't interact. I know that sometimes there a cats that just do better when they are the only cat but we don't want to give up on having the new guy in our house. Is there any hope to get Badger to accept the new addition to our house? We would appreciate if anyone has any advice or success stories from going through a situation like this. Thank you for reading this. We think our boys are cute so I have a picture of both of them for you to see! Badger first then Ghost.
