We think we may have introduced our resident cat to our new cat the wrong way.

[Alldara]

Awwww - the joke was that he was a runt when we got him and my Husband at the time was into strong man competitions. He used to watch this guy called Magnus Von Magnuson, so we thought that was hilarious to name our scrawny cat Magnus.
Turns out, after he was really sick and we nursed him back to health, we realized he was part Maine Coone!
He was our biggest cat ever and my favorite by far. He was the reason I got so into cats. I went on an education "binge" when he was sick and after. I learned so much from that boy.
My ex got custody, or I should say Magnus chose my ex, so he is living happily with him. He ate, slept and pretty much hung out with my ex most of the time. He was the one who held him when he was sick and stayed up at night with him to nurse him back to health, so the affection was well-deserved.

What an interesting coincidence! We got Magnus from a rescue. He was small and scrawny also; it turned out he had a heart murmur that is hard to hear. We worked hard with our vet to get him nice and healthy! Our Magnus is still small, but a big personality. His name at the rescue was "Stache" because he has a slightly darker mustache. Can't really tell anymore.

 

[abella1995]

Hello, back on the site again!

We thought things were going quite well. We are at 5 months as of yesterday. The swapping the cats in their other spaces seemed to work well. We wanted to try taking the gates down with some supervision. We did this a few times and ended up leaving the gates off for 4 days so the cats could roam together. The first 2 days Gabs (new cat) still jumped up on her window and seemed to be eating and drinking seemed happy, Ellie (our resident cat) would chase her a bit but nothing too bad. The other two days however Ellie majorly bullied Gabs to the point where she was guarding Gabby's food. I was afraid Gabs wasn't leaving her favorite spot in the room for a whole day because Ellie wouldnt let her leave or move around. We ended up putting the gates up that evening.

I assume we may have rushed it, they may have not been ready, but I'm glad we did it to try and get them exposed to eachother. We've tried to have them eat wet food together a few days since, and when Ellie is mean we would spray her with water, but I looked up we really can't do that in any form or else she will take it out on Gabby. It's hard not to be frustrated but it's animal instinct to protect her turf.

We are going to continue the swapping, but my husband and I aren't really sure where to go from here. Gabby won't be her bubbly self if the gates are down. We are very patient with her needs, and we want to give her the fullest life she can have. We want her to be able to feel comfortable in the whole house not just half. However we aren't sure when Ellie will stop being a bully to a sweet cat who literally just existing makes Ellie want to bully her.

It's frustrating too because when the gates are up, they act like they want to play with eachother. They will both run back and forth and paw at eachother semi-nicely through the gate. We are so confused.

Tonight we let Ellie in and were petting them both together and Ellie lightly nipped Gabby's tail and hissed. So thats that i guess lol.

Any advice will help, but we are guessing it's more time needed. We use the gate and let them always see eachother as an FYI.

 

[Alldara]

Be patient and take time. If Gabby is returning to her bubbly self when the gate goes back up, then it's a good pace.