My dear dopey cat Rudy passed away a short time ago, and I think his sister needs a new friend. Would it be better for her to have another female around or a male (fixed, of course)?
My two girls have tiffs and squabbles, but both love the Big Boy cat. So, as long as every is fixed, my experience says a male.
Tough call. I’ve been cat person my whole life and there’s been with a little bit of variation, a succession of male cats. Usually litter-mates. Pairs. We’d get a third and sometimes fourth but if I recall correctly, almost always all male. All fixed as kittens.
We did an emergency adoption once for Ashley. She arrived as an adult, female, fixed as a kitten. My GOD they all hated her and she hated them. So much so that after a few months, it was clear we had to re-home her. Healthiest all around.
So, it’s been that dull-eyed gaze of a long run of geldings pauncing around a house. Sleeping on top of us, etc.
Get another male.
My experience is different genders get along better (for cats). I’d get a male cat as a companion (and, as mentioned above, one who has been fixed).
Of course, it is entirely possible two cats of the same gender can get along. Just easiest to mix I think.
Yes different gender is probably best. But one never really knows til they’re together.
Maybe go with a younger cat. Could help.
Whichever way you go, getting a resident adult cat to accept a newcomer tends to be a lot easier and faster if you bring in a kitten rather than another adult. At least that’s been my experience.
Of course, an older adult cat may resent crazy kitten antics, but a baby is a lot less of a threat to the established feline, and some of them will actually take a maternal/paternal liking to the youngster.
In any case, if you’re looking into getting a cat from your local rescue/shelter, inquire about temperament and affinity for other cats. Some cats love being with other cats, some tolerate it, and some want to be an only cat.
This.
IME it depends more on the individual cats than on the gender.
Try to get a cat who’s used to living with other cats.
I’m definitely thinking a younger cat-probably not a little kitten but just past that stage.
It’s whichever one she picks out, whether male or female. When the older dogs passed away we took our puppy to the pound with us and he picked out his emotional support dog and the two have been inseparable ever since.
That might not work with a cat. Many cats freak out at being taken to strange places, and the reaction might just be to that.
I think it depends more on the temprement of the individual cat, rather than gender?
We’ve had mixed experiences with introducing new cats to a household, and I can’t say I have any general advice. If you’re adopting from a shelter, they may have some evidence from observation about whether a particular cat is likely to be comfortable around others or prefers to be solitary?
Most of my cats have been neutered very young, and their sex-at-birth barely matters. They have very different personalities and preferences, but sex isn’t very significant.
I do have a cat now who wasn’t neutered until he was 5, and he’s definitely a boy. He seems indifferent to the nominal sex of the other cats, though.
True, and sure younger.
Could work.
Cat biology 101;
Cats are animals.
Animals think 2 things. Sex and food. (Plus incidentals).
You’ll eliminate the sex part if everyone is neutered.
You’re half way done! Yay!
Food? Ok, feed separated. The incidental here is the cat box. Have two. In separated areas for awhile.
Another incidental is giving of treats. Figure out the top cat. They are first. If you can’t figure out who’s gonna be #1 do it in stereo.
Younger cat will acclimate. Your cat will be the issue, unless they’re really forgiving of foolishness.
Good luck
That varies, I think. I had a full tom show up here years ago when I had an older male neutered when grown, an older female neutered when grown, and two seven month kittens, recently neutered, one of each sex. That tom definitely noticed a difference, and I don’t think he could tell they were neutered: he attacked both the males, trying to drive them out (he was about the size of both of them together, and one was half grown and the other getting old; in a barn or cat colony this would have worked, it’s normal procedure with cats); and tried determinedly to have sex with the female kitten — I had to pull him off her. The older female he ignored; I think he’d probably learned better than to try to mate with an adult female not in heat.
I had to find another place for him. A friend of mine took him; she got him neutered, after which he made friends with her previously resident adult neutered tom.
I have known a very hungry cat to turn away from food to follow a human he wanted affection from.
I’ve also known cats to very obviously grieve for a dead companion.
Plenty of other species, too. Humans are also animals. We didn’t invent love out of nowhere.
Well, I was speaking in general terms. Of course, your cats and my cats love us and would never eat our dead corpses.
But seriously “sex” in other mammals is very very distracting. I’ve seen deer starve themselves to holocaust thin pursuing a doe in estrus.
Neutering makes for happier housepets. If you have show dogs of course you can’t neuter till they retire. Unless they’re wanted for breeding purposes.
But, yeah… I think my cats will grieve if I kick, til they figure out who’s now on treat duty. 
Every leg hug, lick, sniffing(cat scan) and face rubbing in cats is not affection/love. It’s their attempt to own you.
Pretty distracting in a lot of humans, too. We may not go into heat, but it massively affects most people’s lives and the entire structure of our societies.
Unlike humans, other creatures who have been neutered rarely seem upset by it; maybe because for humans it’s a continuous part of our lives, rather than part of a heat cycle. Or maybe just because humans are weird about sex.
It’s very often both; one doesn’t exclude the other. Yes, the cat rubbing those facial scent glands on you is claiming you as part of their clowder, and as a food provider. But they don’t do it to people they dislike or distrust, even if that person’s bringing food.
Oh, I’m sure it does. But my boy-cat often tries to hump my leg, and never tries to hump the other cats (two nominal boys and an old lady). He wrestles with one of the boys, and pretty much ignores the other boy and the old lady, except that he keeps an eye on the old lady if he thinks she’ll be fed, soon. (She’s sick, can’t eat much at a time, and we fed her a lot more often than we feed the others. Yes, the others frequently steal her food.)
And the boy who likes to wrestle also wrestles with his brother, who doesn’t love it, but puts up with it because they like each other.
Some shelters don’t count it as a “return” if you take home a cat for a few days to introduce it to your resident cat-- you have to make that clear upfront, though. You don’t want a return on your account.
I think it’s because animals don’t perceive any physical change-- the reason men get more upset about it-- or the idea of it-- than women do. Men have trouble dealing with neutering their dogs, but a lot of vets talk them into it by offering to implant “neuticles,” prosthetic testicles invented for men who had lost a testicle to accident of cancer, but appropriated by veterinarians, and it apparently has exploded the market for them.
I think animals deal better with amputations better than people, not just because front and rear paws are more alike than hands and feet, and there’s less rehab, but because animals don’t perceive the difference.
Exactly. They never percieve it as a problem if they don’t have it. There’s no emotion tied to it.
Anthropomorphism on our pets that live so closely with us, is so so easy to do.
We all do it. It’s a human thing to do.
But they are animals not humans.
Of course our sex/love lives are all fouled up. We overthink it. Another human thing we do.
And we don’t have the scent glands cats and dogs do. It’s a sense we have lost much ability in.