New Poster - 2 Cat Family

[sleepyhead]

Hello!

My main reason for joining this forum is because we just added a second cat to our household.

Ketto is our 2.5 year old female. She was rescued from the Humane Society and is a very loving cat. She's a lapcat and loves to be held. She's always around my boyfriend and i when we're home and just loves attention. She's also quite timid though - we go away for the weekend fairly often and she gets pretty stressed and usually doesn't come out while the house-sitter is here (despite knowing them and being fine with them when we're home). She often doesn't eat much when we go away.

We decided to add a second cat because we wanted one, and also because we hoped it would help Ketto become less stressed.

Oona is our new cat and we've had her since last Friday, the 21st. She's a 7 month old female and is kittenish enough that she's not territorial at all. We were careful to get a similar personality type to Ketto, so Oona also loves to be held and cuddled but is also very playful and rather clingy.

Right now, Oona lives in our bedroom and Ketto lives in the rest of the house. The integration is going fairly well, and I also plan to make a separate topic in a few days about how it's been going - I've been journalling the experience daily and I read article after article about gradual introductions so it's actually gone fairly smooth.

Looking forward to continuing to explore the forum!

[Susan]

Welcome! Glad to hear you're taking the intro slowly...the slower the better when timid cats are involved. Good luck!

[sleepyhead]

Originally Posted by Susan

Welcome! Glad to hear you're taking the intro slowly...the slower the better when timid cats are involved. Good luck!

Thanks for the welcome! I've read a lot of articles that say it takes around 8 months for cats to really get used to each other, so I'm expecting there to be some hissing and growling at the first introduction. Tomorrow we'll be putting Ketto (the 2.5 year old) in Oona's room and we'll see how that goes. I plan to just sit quietly by the side and I'm assuming she'll just walk around and hiss while she sniffs everything. Then I'll do it again the next day and so on.

When I was 8 I found a stray (Mittens) and when she was 8 we got a second cat and just threw them together. I feel so bad about it now - after a few years she tolerated him and they even slept together, but she was always growling and grouchy (not that she was that much nicer before). In the last couple of years they seemed to have a bit of a weird bonding going on where they often hung around together but she would still growl at him. Mittens recently passed away on October 13th at the age of 19.

[grrawritsjordi]

I am sorry to hear about your older cat passing away. I had a Himalayan that passed away at 15. She was also a grouchy grouch. Never much of a lover, but so beautiful. She had health problems for years.

[Susan]

Hope all went well when you put Ketto in Oona's room!

[Tyrant]

Welcome to the kitty forum and congrats on expanding your family!