I have two cats who are 3 years old (adopted together as siblings) and I am fostering a 9 week old kitten for the time being. Usually my cats are very sweet and absolutely never aggressive, so I thought maybe they could handle a kitten with some time and patience.
It’s been a few days and I’ve kept them separate and been exchanging toys/blankets/beds between them so they can get used to each other’s scents. I noticed a significant decrease in the hissing from my cats at the new kitten’s scent so I thought it would be okay to move on to supervised interactions.
Today, both of my adult cats didn’t show aggression towards him but they both swatted at the kitten once when he ran too close to them (he’s very excited to play with them I think) and hissed when they first noticed him. They also appear to be on higher alert and watch him from a distance as if they are unsure. This is absolutely what I expected and I don’t think they meant to swat him aggressively and it was more more like self defense or a warning to the small guy. I never yelled or corrected them, just removed the kitten immediately.
I just wanted to know about other people’s experience with introducing a new kitten to their existing cats as reassurance that this is normal and expected behavior. Also any tips for this process would be great, I’ve never done this before! I did plenty of research before bringing him in, but any more advice is very much appreciated.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/fwci3x/older_cats_swatting_at_new_kitten/
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