Introducing a new cat to a indoor/outdoor resident cat
Hey guys!
Need some opinions on my particular situation.
I live in a place where my door can be open almost all day so my resident cat (4 years) has access to outside all the time and comes as goes as he wishes. He meets other cats and occasionally they even come in the house. Generally no issues.
On the 20th of April a female pregnant cat appeared. She’s about 7 months and very sweet with people (she just needs to work on her ocasional bitting and scratching inhibition), but not happy to be around other cats at all. She would growl and hiss at RC and he would naturally react. No major fights happened because we we’re always on top of them both, but I know they would be bad if they started.
We could never do the “put in a room and swap” because:
- She would go mental alone in a room, everytime we could not be with her. I have insomnia and simply would not sleep at all. At this point we even started to look for another person to keep her but now one came forward.
- He’s not used to be closed in the house for long and would start to get really stressed. Also he only uses the litter box as a last resort and will hold it
To make it more difficult, our neighbour has another female cat that they let outside sometimes too. She and RC are friends and will often walk around together.
So this is what we did:
- Spayed the new cat (everyone else was already)
- Always have high value treats on hand whenever cats are near each other and being calm
- Lots of play. I try to do individual play but sometimes I’m playing with new cat and RC at the same time because that’s my only option
- Put a net door on one room so that resident cat can roam the house without new cat stalking him (which she’s doing less intensively, but always happens when they are both inside, much less when they are outdoors)
- I have Feliway friends diffusers and both are on Zylkene
- Closing the outside door whenever RC and neighbour cat are out and don’ let new cat out if we can’t monitor them
- At night new cat sleeps with us with a closed door and RC has access to the whole house. He rarely slept in our bed so no big change.
- There’s lots of beds, high points, food and water bowls etc
- Brushing both cats with the same brush
The current state of things:
- RC is coming less to the house and stays near the entrance/living room. Usually leaves when she appears. He’ll still eat etc but I can see he does not want to stay. He will stay longer and even sleep if she is out of sight, but he’s not going into our bedroom for example, where he has a window perch that he used to love.
- It’s less intense now, but she will stalk him when he is walking around inside the house, or when she catches him sleeping (On the window perch for example). She will also block doors, corridors etc and would swat him when he walked by. It’s much better now, and most times I can easily redirect her attention to something else, or she will just observe him as he walks by.
- They can stay really close when I’m giving treats without looking too unconfortable
- Their atitude to each other is much better outside the house, I’ve even seen them just hanging out really close to each other, or some attempted sniffles. They can swat and growl at each other of they get too close while playing or so, but easily recover.
- It hasn’t happened recently because RC had enough I guess, but I caught them sleeping on the same room a few times.
Honestly, I’m a very tired person lol always watching over them, preventing possible negative interactions, reinforcing the positive ones… I work from home so it like this everyday all day.
I see the improvement but I also wonder if I’m interfering too much, or not enough. I’m also worried resident cat is not happy about this and migh stop coming into the house. He was a really happy and playfull cat before and hurts to see him unconfortable. It’s not the first time he has a companion by the way, we used to have another make cat. They weren’t best of friends but would sleep together, groom, etc.
What do you guys think? Should I just relax or keep doing what I’m doing? Any other ideas I could put in practice?
Any happy stories that can motivate me to continue? I don’t mind if they don’t become friends, my goal is that they can stay in the same house together comfortably.
Thanks 😊