Hello all,
I am new to this forum, i browsed a bit around different websites and enjoyed your community.
After having read, watched, countless of articles, videos dealign with cat introduction et play-agression, my wife and I still have trouble. So here is the story.
My wife and I live in a big appartment, plenty of room for cats to run, sleep, hide.
We have a 2 1/2 y.o male/neutered Birman cat. Very healthy, a bit lazy but extremely social with humans (he always greets all, even strangers).
However, we noticed he gets bored and lonely. Even though he rarely is a long day alone, we thought it would do him good to have a companion.
So we recently got a new female 3 and 1/2 month old kitten Birman from the same breeder.
We introduced them as follow:
1. We put her in our office as safe room, without him seeing her. She has a small cat tree, litter, toys and comfortable basket
2. After few days, noticing no agression or fear from both cats and having done sites swaps 2-3 times so they get used to smell, we opened our office with a small barrier so they can see, but not touch, each other. Our cat was very curious and wanted to go see her. She was also very eager to meet him and they regularly tried to touch each other through the gate.
3. As it seem to go smoothly and we sensed they both started to get frustrated to be seperated, without any sign of agression, we started to let them see each other for short period of time (two times 5-10 mn the first day, 3x 15mn the second day, and much longer the third day).
The Positive:
Neither have changed their attitude too much. They are invested in each other.
Our resident car grooms (sometimes a bit too agressively) our kitten
In quite hours, they can nap in same room
They even have eaten in same room sometimes (but that is rare as our cat is a picky eater while our kitten devours her food)
The Negative:
. As he is quite laid back, he likes his quite times and she can get obsessed with him and want to be with him. That annoys him (but predictable i guess ?)
. But what really worries us, is that our cat gets overly excited and dominates her more and more until getting on top of her - biting while she tries to escape (he weighs 5kg, she 600gr) hissing and growling. If she manage to get out of his grip, she runs to hide but he sprints behind (hunting mode).
We try to wear them out seperately, to seperate them with treats or feathers. But he doesn't get distracted. So we started seperate them more again and play with them seperately until they are chill and sleepy (at that point, we open the doors again).
This means we do not dare let them alone, and leave her in her saferoom at night. We do not see much progress. Granted, it only has been a few days but it is exhausting.
Do you have any tips on how we can manage our cats excessively dominating her by pinning her down and biting her while she panicks ?
Many thanks for taking the time to read and even more to answer
I am new to this forum, i browsed a bit around different websites and enjoyed your community.
After having read, watched, countless of articles, videos dealign with cat introduction et play-agression, my wife and I still have trouble. So here is the story.
My wife and I live in a big appartment, plenty of room for cats to run, sleep, hide.
We have a 2 1/2 y.o male/neutered Birman cat. Very healthy, a bit lazy but extremely social with humans (he always greets all, even strangers).
However, we noticed he gets bored and lonely. Even though he rarely is a long day alone, we thought it would do him good to have a companion.
So we recently got a new female 3 and 1/2 month old kitten Birman from the same breeder.
We introduced them as follow:
1. We put her in our office as safe room, without him seeing her. She has a small cat tree, litter, toys and comfortable basket
2. After few days, noticing no agression or fear from both cats and having done sites swaps 2-3 times so they get used to smell, we opened our office with a small barrier so they can see, but not touch, each other. Our cat was very curious and wanted to go see her. She was also very eager to meet him and they regularly tried to touch each other through the gate.
3. As it seem to go smoothly and we sensed they both started to get frustrated to be seperated, without any sign of agression, we started to let them see each other for short period of time (two times 5-10 mn the first day, 3x 15mn the second day, and much longer the third day).
The Positive:
Neither have changed their attitude too much. They are invested in each other.
Our resident car grooms (sometimes a bit too agressively) our kitten
In quite hours, they can nap in same room
They even have eaten in same room sometimes (but that is rare as our cat is a picky eater while our kitten devours her food)
The Negative:
. As he is quite laid back, he likes his quite times and she can get obsessed with him and want to be with him. That annoys him (but predictable i guess ?)
. But what really worries us, is that our cat gets overly excited and dominates her more and more until getting on top of her - biting while she tries to escape (he weighs 5kg, she 600gr) hissing and growling. If she manage to get out of his grip, she runs to hide but he sprints behind (hunting mode).
We try to wear them out seperately, to seperate them with treats or feathers. But he doesn't get distracted. So we started seperate them more again and play with them seperately until they are chill and sleepy (at that point, we open the doors again).
This means we do not dare let them alone, and leave her in her saferoom at night. We do not see much progress. Granted, it only has been a few days but it is exhausting.
Do you have any tips on how we can manage our cats excessively dominating her by pinning her down and biting her while she panicks ?
Many thanks for taking the time to read and even more to answer
