I could use some collective wisdom on my cat intro situation. I tried to write a short summary to give people context, but apparently that is impossible and I have written a novel. Sorry, and thanks to anyone who cares to read and offer thoughts.
Resident cat: 14 year old neutered male. Last of a group of five friends. Lived happily with other cats for many years, although he was always a bully to lower-status cats. However several years back we had a serious redirected aggression issue (many outdoor/stray cats in our area, we have since learned to be much more careful about blocking sightlines, etc.) that did not directly involve him but badly affected the household dynamics from then on. Lots of segregating, reintroducing, etc. The last two years we were down to just him and Difficult Cat, who suffered the most mentally from the redirected aggression issues. Resident spent ~ two years living upstairs, separated from Difficult Cat who decided he was a stranger after a vet visit. We tried throughout that period to reintegrate them but without success, and then Difficult Cat passed away in 09/19. Resident cat was free and easy for a couple months. He gets regular vet care and is in good health.
Fast forward to Christmas, 2019...
Husband surprises me with trip to shelter to pick up a pair of 6 month old neutered brothers. He is an optimist who truly believed that Resident cat would like to have friends again
. We brought them home and worked on earning their trust, confining them to a room upstairs. They hid for a couple weeks under furniture, and we made slow but steady progress (they are now skittish but otherwise sweet and mostly trusting and thoroughly delightful). No attempts were made to introduce them visually to Resident until they had become comfortable with us and their surroundings (several weeks). We did scent swapping, and our house is teeny so sound exposure was unavoidable.
So here we are in May. For brevity's sake I won't try to list all the stages/results of our introduction program, but I have read and taken heed of the instructions on this site and elsewhere. We have gotten as far as free mingling a couple of times but it has not gone very well so we have (more than once) stepped back several stages and started again.
The good:
This is where we are stalled:
I can give treats very close on either side of the gate. As long as treats are flowing, Resident is willing to be distracted by them. However, once the flow of greenies dries up, he frequently becomes fixated on the New Boys and will bat at them through the barrier (they tend to rub up against the gate. Most of the time they don't even notice he batted. If they notice, they generally react playfully). He will sometimes rush at the gate to bat at them.
When he is batting, his ears are forward and alert, his whiskers are a little puffy, as is his tail. It doesn't read as extreme aggression but it's not playful. He looks...excited and irritated.
If they are on either side of a door (we have an accordion door at the top of a stairwell), and the New Boys stick their little paws under, Resident will bat at them quite forcefully. No hissing, but again, doesn't seem fun for him.
We have tried to mingle (haven't always used best practices with treats at the ready - and on a couple occasions it was an unplanned mingle when a New Boy escaped). The same thing happens: he rushes an unsuspecting New Boy (they are very mobile cats who tend to start zipping around exploring given any opportunity), jumps him, bats him, New Boy runs away (not in "terror", but not playfully. Kind of a "what in heck just happened???" sort of thing). Husband saw last time this happened a couple weeks ago - Resident hissed, and some fur did fly. No one seemed to be having fun.
Just to back up, we have experimented with 'only see each other when getting treats', and with 'complete visual access through a gate most of the time' (and everything in between). We were hoping 'complete visual access' would let Resident get more used to seeing them in motion. Didn't seem to help at the time, and it may have made Resident more stressed, so we're back to only limited viewing. Even when we were doing it, it was of limited usefulness because the barrier isn't in a place where Resident would naturally hang out on side or just happen to see them
Ideal outcome obviously is getting everyone desegregated permanently. That being said, if we have to split the house until Resident cat passes away, we will do that. They are all great cats, the New Boys seem perfectly happy, and Resident seems...like the mildly grumpy old man he is, still able to take pleasure in simple things. Side note: my background dealing with our redirected aggression issues has made me super, SUPER anxious regarding introductions, so it is possible that I am missing opportunities to move things forward because of my great fear of them going poorly. My priorities, of equal weight: I want Resident cat to be as happy as possible, and I don't want anything to damage the bond between the New Boys, as it is truly a thing of beauty. My greatest fear is that a bad interaction with Resident cat could disturb their bond.
Any ideas on what my next steps should be? What signs should I be looking for? Happy to give more details (there are MORE DETAILS?!) on whether we have tried a specific thing or whatnot.
Last thing: Husband and I have different schedules (weirdly even now, when we are still under a coronavirus stay-at-home) so most progress will have to be made with only a single human available.
New Boys:
Probably the best moment, never repeated since (and it didn't last long):
Resident cat: 14 year old neutered male. Last of a group of five friends. Lived happily with other cats for many years, although he was always a bully to lower-status cats. However several years back we had a serious redirected aggression issue (many outdoor/stray cats in our area, we have since learned to be much more careful about blocking sightlines, etc.) that did not directly involve him but badly affected the household dynamics from then on. Lots of segregating, reintroducing, etc. The last two years we were down to just him and Difficult Cat, who suffered the most mentally from the redirected aggression issues. Resident spent ~ two years living upstairs, separated from Difficult Cat who decided he was a stranger after a vet visit. We tried throughout that period to reintegrate them but without success, and then Difficult Cat passed away in 09/19. Resident cat was free and easy for a couple months. He gets regular vet care and is in good health.
Fast forward to Christmas, 2019...
Husband surprises me with trip to shelter to pick up a pair of 6 month old neutered brothers. He is an optimist who truly believed that Resident cat would like to have friends again
. We brought them home and worked on earning their trust, confining them to a room upstairs. They hid for a couple weeks under furniture, and we made slow but steady progress (they are now skittish but otherwise sweet and mostly trusting and thoroughly delightful). No attempts were made to introduce them visually to Resident until they had become comfortable with us and their surroundings (several weeks). We did scent swapping, and our house is teeny so sound exposure was unavoidable. So here we are in May. For brevity's sake I won't try to list all the stages/results of our introduction program, but I have read and taken heed of the instructions on this site and elsewhere. We have gotten as far as free mingling a couple of times but it has not gone very well so we have (more than once) stepped back several stages and started again.
The good:
- the New Boys, probably because they were in a shelter so long (several months at least), have always been blasé-to-curious about Resident cat. Even though there have been a few times where Resident has "gone after" one of them (details below), they seem only temporarily chastened.
- New Boys are now comfortable both upstairs and downstairs, which allows us to site swap at night so that Resident cat always has the opportunity to sleep with us, and the boys can run around like dopes as much as they need to. At their age and activity level it became impossible to confine them to a single room at night and have any hope of sleeping (plus all the sad noises they would make just made Resident more stressed) so this is the best we can do. As a result, we have site/scent swapping built into every day.
- Resident cat has had some stress/depression issues (poor grooming, withdrawal) but seems to be back to a decent place now. I put him on .25mg of fluoxetine a few weeks ago (hoping that it would help both with his stress and his aggression towards the New Boys) It may or may not be helping him, but he eats, grooms, uses the litterbox properly and purrs, and does seem a bit happier lately. Resident gets treats and love, sadly is not very interested in playing, although I do try.
- If I am quick with the greenies, we can achieve a nose sniff through a barrier, and head off any batting. Otherwise, there is batting. More on that below.
- Resident cat has not hissed at them (through a barrier) for weeks, even when he seems pretty annoyed (batting hard at their paws under a door, for example).
- I do visual encounters through a closed wire shelving gate. Fishy wet food once/per day, greenies once or twice. If I keep Resident's fishy food a moderate distance from the gate, he is likely to just walk away when he is done, and does not generally become fixated on the New Boys on the other side of the gate.
This is where we are stalled:
I can give treats very close on either side of the gate. As long as treats are flowing, Resident is willing to be distracted by them. However, once the flow of greenies dries up, he frequently becomes fixated on the New Boys and will bat at them through the barrier (they tend to rub up against the gate. Most of the time they don't even notice he batted. If they notice, they generally react playfully). He will sometimes rush at the gate to bat at them.
When he is batting, his ears are forward and alert, his whiskers are a little puffy, as is his tail. It doesn't read as extreme aggression but it's not playful. He looks...excited and irritated.
If they are on either side of a door (we have an accordion door at the top of a stairwell), and the New Boys stick their little paws under, Resident will bat at them quite forcefully. No hissing, but again, doesn't seem fun for him.
We have tried to mingle (haven't always used best practices with treats at the ready - and on a couple occasions it was an unplanned mingle when a New Boy escaped). The same thing happens: he rushes an unsuspecting New Boy (they are very mobile cats who tend to start zipping around exploring given any opportunity), jumps him, bats him, New Boy runs away (not in "terror", but not playfully. Kind of a "what in heck just happened???" sort of thing). Husband saw last time this happened a couple weeks ago - Resident hissed, and some fur did fly. No one seemed to be having fun.
Just to back up, we have experimented with 'only see each other when getting treats', and with 'complete visual access through a gate most of the time' (and everything in between). We were hoping 'complete visual access' would let Resident get more used to seeing them in motion. Didn't seem to help at the time, and it may have made Resident more stressed, so we're back to only limited viewing. Even when we were doing it, it was of limited usefulness because the barrier isn't in a place where Resident would naturally hang out on side or just happen to see them
Ideal outcome obviously is getting everyone desegregated permanently. That being said, if we have to split the house until Resident cat passes away, we will do that. They are all great cats, the New Boys seem perfectly happy, and Resident seems...like the mildly grumpy old man he is, still able to take pleasure in simple things. Side note: my background dealing with our redirected aggression issues has made me super, SUPER anxious regarding introductions, so it is possible that I am missing opportunities to move things forward because of my great fear of them going poorly. My priorities, of equal weight: I want Resident cat to be as happy as possible, and I don't want anything to damage the bond between the New Boys, as it is truly a thing of beauty. My greatest fear is that a bad interaction with Resident cat could disturb their bond.
Any ideas on what my next steps should be? What signs should I be looking for? Happy to give more details (there are MORE DETAILS?!) on whether we have tried a specific thing or whatnot.
Last thing: Husband and I have different schedules (weirdly even now, when we are still under a coronavirus stay-at-home) so most progress will have to be made with only a single human available.
New Boys:
Probably the best moment, never repeated since (and it didn't last long):
