Cats Guide

Health, behaviour, and feeding for every stage, from a new kitten to a senior cat.

Practical cat care, from a first kitten to old age.

New cats and introductions

Community · 1 thread

Kittens, rescues, and resident cats who are not impressed.

Bringing a new cat home is the happy part. Persuading the existing cat to tolerate the newcomer is the long part, and it's where most of the panicked posts in this section come from. Hissing at week two feels like failure; the threads below are mostly people discovering it's nearer the average.

Before you declare the introduction ruined

The timeline is the recurring surprise in this section. Owners come in expecting days and find the settled versions of these stories run six weeks, two months, sometimes longer, with progress that goes backwards before it goes forwards. Almost every success story below involves someone slowing down: back to separate rooms, back to scent swapping, back to feeding on either side of a door.

If you're mid-introduction and losing heart, the site's step-by-step guides to introducing a kitten to other pets and introducing two adult cats set out the stages and, just as usefully, the signs that things are moving even when it doesn't feel like it.

Genuine fighting with injuries, or a cat who stops eating or using the tray because of the stress, is a different matter from hissing and posturing, and worth raising with your vet or a behaviourist rather than waiting out.