A blended cat family. Methods?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My fiance and I are to be married at the end of April.

This love of mine comes equipped with a wonderful personality, sexy attitude, a healthy dose of compatible weirdness, and, most importantly to this thread, two cats.

There’s Gizmo, the Siamese mix, and Sunshine, the dime-a-dozen orange tabby. Both female, both nice adult cats.

Then there’s Queen Anne, lord of my domain. She’s my very ill-tempered, highly territorial, old-lady cat. She thinks I hung the sun and moon and worships the very ground I walk on but hates every other carbon-based life form on this miserable planet. She’s about 14 years old and, except for some obvious hip-joint pain, is in pretty good health. She pretty much hates all other cats and will hiss and spit whenever one comes near. Past experience says that even years of living with another cat does not dull her utter disdain.

When my lady and I move together, her cats will follow come with her. The Queen will not be amused.

The plan is that I’ll actually move into the house my fiance has owned for years, currently occupied by a renter, and that when we marry in a couple months, she’ll move in with me. For a month or two (not being sure is another story) I’ll live by myself in her house.

The problem is how to introduce the cats so to cause the least friction.

My thinking is that if her cats move in when I move in then all the cats are new to the house. No cat will feel territorial and, perhaps, they might all get along. I’m a comparative stranger to her cats, though. Well - they like me enough but I’m not “Mom”. I’m just that guy the see a lot but isn’t Mom-cat.

Another option is to have her cats come with her two months after I move in but I’m worried that Queen Anne will “own” the house by then and her cats’ll be interlopers.

I found some kitty tranquilizers in the pet store and wondered if that might make my cat mellow enough to accept the changes more easily.

Any suggestions on how to blend two cat families?

2

When my fiance moved in, I had two cats (one male, one female), approximately 17 and 12 years old. They owned my house, they were the masters. My fiance moved in with FIVE cats, two female, three male.

Fortunately, we were able to seperate them by floor for a week or so. Switch floors every couple of days to get them used to the smells, let them meet during the switches. Occasionally let one alone meet the others.

It didn’t go exceptionally well. My cats were in their own domain, they were older, and by gum, they were going to be the alphas no matter what. My fiance’s male was twice as heavy and twice as mean. He tried to bully my old boy and I had to intervene, which made my boy alpha by dint of both his own will and mine. The others learned not to mess with him too hard or I’d intervene, and he generally left them alone as long as they didn’t bother him.

Six months later we moved from my house to hers. Half the size and now the five were in their home territory and mine were the strangers.

The real problem turned out to be the females, which unfortunately turned into a pissing contest, quite literally, with each of them urinating in the places the others had chosen as their spots. This in turn led to the two youngest cats, both under a year, turning into little piss monsters, pissing everywhere and on everything. I lost quite a few things in that time, chairs, coats, a futon…

Good luck with your blending and I hope to Og that you don’t have half the problems we had. Kitty Qualudes are definitely a good idea. They helped us through some of the worst times.

With only three cats to blend, you’re not likely to have as many problems. The big issue will be how well Queen Anne and Sunshine get along, whether or not Sunshine can handle not being alpha, and if she can get enough attention and have enough special places to hang out keep her out of Queen Anne’s way.

3

Well first off you’re gonna need a BIG blender! :stuck_out_tongue:

4

Have you asked your local cat shelter? They deal with this problem everyday. And I agree it is a serious problem; unhappy cats, and cats trying to dominate, all are likely to pee stinky cat pee all around your house.

5

Whatever you do, don’t just throw them together on Day 1. When my husband and I first moved in together with his old orangie and my younger gray tabby, my poor little guy just flipped out and hid in a corner for the first day, so we had to separate them. The younger cat (my Jack) got the bedroom & bath area for a week, and the old guy (his Tommy) got the rest of the place, and they got to peek at each other through the doors & the heater grate once in awhile. The issue was more Jack since he’d only been socialized with people since he was a kitten and hadn’t been exposed to other cats, while Tommy’d been around for years and thought everyone was his bestest friend. We’d gradually start leaving the bedroom door open for longer periods and eventually Jack got used to the other cat and we could leave them alone. They’re bestest friends now: (obligatory cat pic).

We had another challenge a little over a year ago when we moved again into a new place and my sis-in-law was going to be living with us with HER siamese. We actually got lucky with that arrangement though since her cat & our Tommy used to be roommates, so that kindof eased the transition. They don’t like each other, but they’d been acquainted so it wasn’t a shock, and since Tommy knew the “new” cat it helped Jack acclimate to him, too. We had Angel (sis’s cat) move into our old apartment with us for a week before the move to the new place, so by the time we actually got to the new place all the cats were buddies (well, as friendly as could be expected anyway since Angel doesn’t really get along with anyone except his person).

My best suggestion is to have all the cats move in at the same time, keep them in separate rooms for the first week, with the opportunity to see each other for brief periods and then gradually let them hang out more often until they’re not all freaked out. Having them swap places once in awhile isn’t a bad idea either.

6

I think the ideal situation would be for the 14 year old cat to move into the house for some weeks before the others do, so that it is her territory. As an older female she will not want to maintain a large territory, so when the others move in she should have someplace safe the others don’t enter, like maybe a bedroom. Her territory will probably shrink to that space and the others will establish territories on her margins. Note that your observation of this will be complicated and obscured by the fact that cat territories have borders that change at different times of day.

The introduction of the younger cats to the house ought to be, first, by bringing them in in carriers or cages, and placing these in a big open area like the livingroom. The old lady can approach the cages, and everybody can look at each other and pick up some scents without the possibilities of fighting and fleeing into established territories. In, oh, a day or two you may see the cats lounging around within sight of each other. This is a good sign that whatever fighting may occur when you start releasing cats will be less severe than it would have otherwise.

You can also help fix things by going back and forth petting cats from the different cats. In so doing you will transfer their scents into each other’s fur. This normally happens when cats socialize, when they are part of the same loose-knit group. Cats tend to interpret the scent of another cat in their own fur as a sign that the other cat is safe.

7

I agree with most of the suggestions so far, especially not tossing them all together immediately. I just wanted to let you know that “Feliway” really does work in calming kitties who are anxious. It’s cat phermones (sp) and it has worked beautifully for my crabby kitty.

8

When I first intorduced Lenny and Squiggy, we gave each a separate room. Then each would get the run of the house at separate times while the other was locked in his room. So they both knew there was another cat around and they had a few snarly episodes peering at each other from the crack under the door. Then they had supervised “visits” when they were boh allowed out at the same time.

There was some poofed tails and a bit of posturing, but no violence. During the day, they were both locked in their respective rooms. Gradually, the supervised visits got longer and longer until I was confident I could let them both walk around the house overnight wile I was home but sleeping.

Eventually they seemed to get along well enough that I could leave them both walking around while I was at work. Once they were used to each other, they became good buddies. Although early on there was a little bit of blood as evidence of some kind of altercation, although niether seemed injured.