Introducing a New Cat into Your Home
I moved in with these humans in 2013, so I don’t quite remember what it was like when they first brought me home. But I saw what the humans did with Moxie, and Mama, and Larry (and soon Susie — seriously?), and decided maybe it would be a good thing if I shared what’s worked for us.
Location
Every time a new cat came into the house, they got put into a spare bedroom (which is good, because I wasn’t about to share my food with a new cat right away). The room had its own litter box, toys, scratching posts, food, and water that the humans bought special for the new cat. But if the cat had a home with people before, the humans asked if they could bring in stuff from the cat’s house, like toys and blankets, so the cat had some stuff that had a smell they recognized. (Apparently Susie is coming with her own scratching post, so I don’t have to share mine with her.)
Human female says hiding spots in the room are good to have so the cat can, well, hide. (I don’t get the hiding bit — I’m way too gorgeous for people not to see me — but apparently that’s a thing some cats do.) Mama hid for a long time (which is funny, because now she’s always under the humans’ feet). She had a box she used to hide in, and sometimes she’d hide behind the pillow on the bed. Larry hid, too, only he liked to hide behind the door, and when the door was shut all of us used to pet his fur under the door (and when I say “pet his fur” I mean I totally used to stick my paw under there and goose him).
The door stayed closed for forever (edit: female human says weeks), which I liked because I didn’t have to see the new cat, but we could still smell each other.
Eventually, when the cat wasn’t hiding all the time, the humans would start opening the door and putting up baby gates. That’s when things got *really* interesting, because we could all see each other (which yeah, wasn’t always a good thing).
Time and Patience
The humans made sure to spend time with each cat in the spare bedroom. Every day they’d go up there for a few hours and just hang out with the new cat, talking to it, reading, working, watching TV, etc. And when the baby gates went up, the humans and the rest of us would be on one side, with the new cat on the other, and we’d all just sort of hang out for awhile, eating treats, playing with feather sticks, just getting used to each other. That helped a lot.
Moxie, Larry, and Mama all took different amounts of time to feel comfortable joining the rest of us. Moxie took the least time, then Mama, and then Larry. Each cat let us know when they were ready to join us, and the humans didn’t push. How did they let us know? Mama just jumped the gate one day and was hanging out on the stairs watching us eat — that’s when we knew she was ready. Larry did basically the same thing. And Moxie? She was born ready — maybe because she was so old when the humans adopted her, she was just ready to continue her life with a family? Dunno. The point is, the humans didn’t push, and us cats didn’t push — we just let the new cats figure it out and let us know when they wanted to be part of our family.
Smells
One thing I remember when I moved in with the humans is that stuff did not smell like I expected it to — everything was super different. And it smelled like a LOT of cats I didn’t know, and I didn’t really like that a whole lot. So the humans did this thing, where they’d play with me with a toy for a few days, and then swap that toy with a different toy for a few days. Only when they gave me a new toy, it smelled like the other cats…and they gave MY toy to the other cats to play with. So even if I didn’t like their smell and they didn’t like mine, we got used to each other that way.
The female human would also leave t-shirts in the room with me, and they smelled like her and the male human. That was weird at first, but then I realized the t-shirts were comfy and I could sleep on them, so when the female human took them back she could smell like me.
The humans also use these plug-in things that smell like cat pheromones. They’re supposed to help calm us cats down and get us used to each other. None of us really fight or hiss or freak out at each other, so I guess they work…
Flexibility
Human female wants me to tell you that you have to be flexible. I can put my paws behind my head, but I don’t think that’s the kind of flexible she means. It’s more that you have to take your new cat where it’s at, not where you think it should be. You have no idea what your cat went through before you brought it into your house, and just because it’s a nice house and you’ve got all the things a cat could ever want doesn’t mean your new cat is going to be super thrilled to hang out with you right away. It also doesn’t mean your current cats are going to be super thrilled to have a new cat (*glares at male human for bringing home new female cat*). So you gotta be flexible, and understand that you might make some progress with getting us to get along, and then things might get bad for a few days (or weeks, depending on how irritating the new cat is *glares at Larry*), and you just have to twist like I do mid-air when I’m jumping down from the chair and figure out a different way to move forwards.
While I’m not thrilled about having to share the humans’ bed at night with *another* cat, I know that with the way they do things, we’ll eventually get used to each other, and we’ll get along. (Unless, that is, she tries to steal my chair — then all bets are off.)
