Hey everyone, I have been meaning to write this post for a while to talk about the process of introducing my cat to a new kitten, because I know that I would have really liked to read something like this while going through the process. For the first ~4-6 months of the introduction process, the adult cat was on Zylkene and was fed Royal Canin Calm. I can't really say if this helped or not, the effects may have been very subtle but I didn't want to "test" without either of these in case that made it worse. We have also been using the Feliway Friends diffuser the whole time, and I do think that this has been a major help, as I can still sometimes notice changes in their interactions towards the end of the month when it is almost empty.
My adult cat (Cleo, now 8, 7 at the time of introduction) has always been a bit challenging. I adopted her from a shelter when she was around 2 years old. They did not know much about her history, so I just always assumed there was some trauma involved. Vet visits are a nightmare for everyone involved and she needs to be sedated for any examination to take place. While she does generally enjoy being around people, she does not like to be touched unless it is on her own terms. She has never been a lap cat, the closest she gets to cuddling is sitting next to you.
I guess because I was really missing that cuddle factor, I decided (somewhat selfishly) that once I lived in a place with enough space/separate rooms for a slow introduction to be possible, I would want to get a second cat. That opportunity arose when an acquaintance of mine took in a litter of 3 kittens who had been found on the side of the road. She posted on Facebook that she would be raising them until they were 8 weeks old, but that they would need homes after that. The timing seemed right, so I offered to take one. I would visit the kittens several times a week and bring a towel back and forth to swap scents between my cat and the kitten. Cleo never seemed particularly bothered by the scent, so I saw this as a good sign.
Pretty much exactly 1 year ago, 8 week old Sirkka came into our home. I don't remember the exact timeline for everything, but I basically had them completely separated for a few days at least, feeding them small meals on opposite sides of the door several times a day. Eventually I started occasionally switching rooms for a few hours a day so they could smell each other. I started putting the kitten in a carrier for meal times, so the cat could see and sniff her. I did not reverse this (i.e. with big cat in the carrier) because Cleo doesn't like her carrier and I figured that would just be too much stress for her. The kitten on the other had would regularly sleep in her carrier, so being confined in there was not a big deal.
Cleo did not like the kitten. Almost every meal she would growl and maintain eye contact with the kitten while eating (it honestly sounded really funny, we called it "angry eating"). After eating she would sometimes go up to the carrier at bat at it. When this happened I separated them again.
After a while, when the angry eating subsided a bit, I put up a net in a door frame, and started feeding and playing with them on opposite sides of the net. The kitten started getting bold and pouncing at the net, which brought back the angry eating on the cat's side. She would also bat at the net and try to get the kitten. This didn't really seem to get better, so we eventually decided to let them have 1 meal a day alone, to give Cleo a bit of relief.
This seemed to help a bit, so eventually the net came down during meals. I still kept them mostly separated outside of meal time, as the kitten would always want to pounce and play with the cat, and Cleo didn't like that. Eventually we started supervised time together, playing with the kitten to distract her from Cleo, and isolating her again if she bothered Cleo too much. At some point, probably about 2 months in, we decided that for things to improve, we needed to let Cleo tell Sirkka to leave her alone (i.e. I needed to stop being so protective of the kitten and just let Cleo smack her a few times so she gets the message). This isn't really what most sites advise you to do, but knowing my cats it seemed to be the only way forward. So rather than intervening right away, I let them fight it out to a degree (still watching closely and ready to intervene if the claws and teeth really started coming out).
Once we established that (a), Cleo wasn't really trying to hurt the kitten, but was just trying to get her to leave her alone and (b), the kitten was really good at running away and hiding in places Cleo couldn't reach, we started leaving them together unsupervised for short periods of time, still separating them overnight or if we were gone for several hours. I think this was around 3 months in. They were by no means friends yet, but we felt confident after observing their behavior that it wasn't really escalating much beyond a few swats and a pounce before the kitten darted off.
After 4 months, when the kitten was 6 months old, she got spayed. And this was a major relief, because once she healed from the surgery, we could let her outside to let her energy out there! (I live in Europe where letting your cats out is more the norm, and I have a somewhat enclosed terrace so they cannot get very far). This was really the turning point, because she had so much to explore outside and didn't really bother Cleo so much anymore. Once she was able to let out her energy outside, I started leaving them together unsupervised. I still separated them at night (and still do mostly, though we are working on that final step... the issue is more that they chase each other at night and I can't sleep, but they don't really get into big fights).
So a year later, this is where we are now! They are together unsupervised all day, sometimes for 10+ hours at a time. When I am home, the doors and windows are usually open so they can roam outside. They do wrestle with each other sometimes, which definitely starts as play, but then sometimes turns into a fight when Cleo has had enough but Sirkka wants to keep going. They will sit on the same bean bag together, but don't really cuddle. I have however caught Cleo very briefly grooming Sirkka a few times! I feed them 3 times a day (rather than twice, as I was doing when it was just Cleo), because I find that they get along better when they don't have to go that long in between meals. I do still separate them at night, mostly for my own sleep, but am working on this now. One obstacle here is that I usually give them dry food in little food balls overnight, so they eat slowly and have a bit of entertainment while I am sleeping. Cleo doesn't know how Sirkka's food dispenser works, but Sirkka knows how Cleo's works and will steal her food. So I am looking for a solution to that now....
TL;DR I went through a difficult cat - kitten introduction that took around 5 months to stabilize. But we powered through, and they now mostly ignore each other.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/czikoi/i_successfully_introduced_a_kitten_to_my/
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