As some of you know, we brought Stokie in from the cold and introduced him to the other two cats two weeks ago. Dewey doesn’t mind him and never has. Edison has to date shown no signs of giving in.
Edison hisses when he sees Stokie, and sometimes there’s growling and chasing. Also, Stokie seems to have bullied the other two out of their bed and sometimes initiate the Edison conflict (when originally it was just Eddles.) Stokie has grown much more confident, but he does seem to be bullying both the other cats.
The boyfriend wants me to find Stokie a new home just because he thinks three is too many, and because he thinks it isn’t fair to the two we have. We have to keep him at least one more week because he needs another deworming and such. I wouldn’t want him to go to a stranger - he’s an extremely sweet cat and I like him a lot. I just don’t want to also ruin Dewey and Edison’s lives. (Dewey is so freaked out he has lost his voice.)
Will they get over it? Is two weeks not long enough? When we just had Dewey and got Edison it took about a week for detente and two weeks for loving snuggles in the basket. I don’t see any loving snuggles here.
I’ve had cats take months to adjust to a newcomer. I’ve never had out and out fighting, but Hanna especially takes awhile to warm up to a new cat. Growls and hisses are normal, and it may take more time.
My roommate got Cat No. 1; several months later, we took in Cat No. 2, a stray. Tragically, we’d found Cat No. 2 on our doorstep, yowling. He was tangled up in string – the vet told us that kids sometimes tie string around a cat’s neck and paw, and swing the cat until its neck breaks. I can’t even conceive of such a thing.And after hearing that story, we had to adopt Cat No. 2.
Cat No. 1 never warmed up to Cat No. 2, and after living with us for only a couple months, we had to put Cat No. 2 to sleep because he was quite, quite ill. Then, in grief, I adopted Cat No. 3. Cat No. 1 stopped hissing at Cat No. 3 after a few months, but they didn’t really become friends until a couple years had passed. They’re both gone on to their reward now, but they were pretty inseparable the last ten years or so.
Are these all male cats? I’ve never known male cats not to work it out fairly quickly. Say, a month. Obviously, that’s speaking only from my own experience, I’m sure there are counterexamples. But I would expect that they do need to determine a pecking order and it won’t be based on human considerations.
Our two females, very different in age, don’t get along and can only be together with supervision. We gave it a couple years, but eventually came to the conclusion that the young one is too much of an alpha cat/ attention hog to make it work.
Have you tried making sure there are enough beds & litterboxes & food bowls & water bowls for everyone? Have you tried Feliway, which supposedly contains feline-calming hormones? It didn’t do the trick for me, but they did seem to react somewhat positively to it.
There’s a product that I’ve had a few of my friends try in this situation and it’s worked. It’s called Feliway . You can order online, or places like Petsmart have it too.
It’s often marketed to help break a cat’s bad habit of urinating in wrong places. It also gives a “good vibe” kind of kitty pheromone that (in my experience) has mellowed the kitties out. It’s like a “oh snap, there’s a nice kitty around here…I’ll chill out” feeling for the kitties.
I’d suggest spraying it in their crates, where they sleep, favorite places to lay, near the food…anywhere but at the litter box. It doesn’t have to be a lot, a little goes a long way. It’s a bit expensive, so that’ll help to use it sparingly. I’ve never used the diffuser, just the 75mL bottle.
There was no peace in my valley for almost a month after I brought my Oreobrat home. Lunabrat was still quite young - I believe I’d only had her about 4 months at the time - but we had to endure a couple of weeks of chasing, snarling, spitting, and fighting. I left them (mostly) alone to work it out, and now they’re best buds, joined together in a common cause against the dog.
I do have the little sprayer of Feliway and used it when they were first introduced - had kind of forgotten about it. I don’t know if it was helping or not. What does help is the “CUT THAT SHIT OUT” spray bottle. (Helps me, I mean, I don’t know if it helps the cats.)
It takes either no time of a few weeks, generally. Midnight and Maggie didn’t get along at all when we first got them, and for a couple of weeks they wouldn’t even use the same litter box, or one in the same room. But within a few weeks that vanished, and later the two of them slept together.
More recently Lotta and Hestia have, after almost two years, started to tolerate each other.
On the other hand, Midnight was still hissing at Clarence (after living together eight years) on the day she died.
Also, any tips on getting a former feral cat to use my litter robot? 'Cause having two litter boxes in the dining room sucks. I know they may need extra boxes for their giant personalities, but Stokie has never gone in the robot and I don’t want him not doing it because he’s scared to - I’ll keep extra boxes there if he needs them but it does put a crimp on dinner. Usually the extra box is in the second bath and in play only if the hall doors are open.
We introduced our ~1.5 year old male cat to a ~5 month old kitten, the kitten bugged the older cat a lot for a month or more, now they’re fine together. They even curl up together to sleep in the sun. I think they’re cousins or something too. Everybody’s cousins around here.
We’ve had Bob (1 year old) for about six months now, and Missy (~8 year old) is very gradually letting him hang out with her. At first she wouldn’t even stay in the same room without hissing, but now I’ve found them sleeping in the same spot of sunshine. Not touching, of course, but within a foot or two. I’m still hoping they’ll eventually be friends.
Have you tried turning off the automatic cleaning for a while? Just go down there and manually activate it from time to time when the cat is busy with something else. A nuisance, but less of a nuisance than scooping.
Good idea from ENugent. You also might need to isolate the other cats in another room of the house for a while and make the robot box Stokie’s only box option.
When I married, I had 4 cats, a mom and 3 of her daughters; my wife had one male. The pecking order became: My momma cat pounded my wife’s cat > Wife’s cat pounded the timid daughter and the daughter that was blind in one eye. Wife cat and 3rd daughter never backed down from each other and constantly fought.
8 years later, mamma cat passes away at the ripe old age of 18, one-eye blind passes a few months later (age 16) and the timid one gets hit by a cat, all in the space of about 7 months.
Now that there are only 2 cats, the two which constantly fought get alone great. They snuggle at night, groom each other, share the same food bowl. Maybe in their old age (mine’s 18, my wife’s is 14) they decided it was easier to get along. Or maybe that mine no longer has a pussy posse to back her up, she decided diplomacy was the way to go.
Ours took about 2 years to be in the same room as each other, and about 5 before lying on the same bed and touching tails accidentally wasn’t probable cause for a hissing match.
I wouldn’t say they’re *affectionate *with one another even now (certainly they don’t cuddle or groom one another) but they’re entirely tolerable to live with.
12+ years and my two oldest torties never got along. I just lost the younger, along with a male and the oldest one is still hissy to every other cat in the house. As long as they each had their own space, all was well.
My oldest male took a couple of years before he’d play with the other cats. He was a bit of a jerk but his urge to spar won over and he started playing with my younger male. Hours of good clean fun watching them swat each other over and over and over again.
I love snotty cats though and go out of my way for them. My present herd consists of feral cat “remainders” who all know each other but that doesn’t stop the spats.
Can’t help on the litter robot but if there is a manual option, I’d try it for a bit. I’ve always wanted one but I suspect it wouldn’t last with all the felines in the house.
