Resident cat chasing new cat

[Yodasmom]

I adopted a now 3 year old cat named Dalia back in August. She is an awesome kitty, very sweet and social. She was with other cats in her foster home with the rescue, but has been my only pet until this past Friday. On Friday, I adopted a two year old kitty named Penny. I have her in the guest bedroom as she gets used to her new home. She was also with other cats in the past and did fine.

I have been begun slowly allowing Penny access to the rest of my house, and the problem I am having is that Dalia keeps chasing her back up the stairs when she tries to come downstairs. When they are upstairs, Dalia will also do things like sit in Penny's space and stare at her while Penny hisses and growls. There have been no physical altercations though.

Is there something else I should be doing to get Dalia used to having a second cat in the house? I feel like she's being a bit of a bully. Is this normal and should I just let it work itself out? They are both eating and using their litter boxes appropriately. I am feeding them in separate spaces and keeping Penny in the guest room for now when I'm at work or sleeping.

 

[susanm9006]

You just need to give Dalia more time to adjust. A few days isn’t long enough for an adult cat. If you want to let the new cat out to explore, put Dalia in Penny’s room or another room. You want to take their introduction slowly and not let them meet face to face until both are calmer.

 

[ArtNJ]

When both cats are adults, it is a particularly good idea to do a slow introduction process, and progress from step to step based on how things are going. For example, if one cat seems tense based on the mere smell of the other cat, you would linger at the scent swapping phase. Here is this site's main guide on introductions:

How To Successfully Introduce Cats: The Ultimate Guide – Cat Articles

Although the process isn't magic and quite often cats need to do some work at the end, getting used to each other and stopping with the hissing and growling, if you go slow and let the process take a few weeks or longer (if it appears to need that based on how its going), very often you will see improvement and when they do meet they will be a lot less tense.

"Got along with other cats in the prior home" is something that quite often fools people into thinking an introduction will be easy. It actually doesn't mean much if time has passed, and the cat in question has not very recently accepted a new cat.

 

[Yodasmom]

I wanted to post a quick update. Things are going better. I pulled back for a few days and did more site swapping, then tried letting them see other again and it went better. They aren't friends by any means, but Dalia isn't chasing Penny back up the stairs and they are making progress towards tolerating each other. I am having a small issue getting Penny to continue to sleep in the guest room at night. Once I started letting her out, she throws a fit when I put her in the room and close the door. So I'm starting to let her roam the house while Dalia sleeps in the master bedroom with me with the door closed.