we had 3 cats our 2 old boys bug and bowie who are 13, and ziggy a youngster of 1, all are neutered, ziggy likes to play but the older boys want to sleep, so we decided to adopt cat number four, duchess a neutered female age 1 she is a lovely brown tabby, very timid,she has been living in a top floor flat with no outside access so chances are she has never seen another cat since she was with her mum, we obviously need to keep duchess in for a while before finally letting her out, but at them moment if ziggy comes in she hisses and growls and he reciprocates, ziggy then takes great pleasure in sitting on my husbands knee staring duchess out she is under the sofa! we tried rubbing them both with catnip and giving treats to associate good things with one another, is there a way to get them to "talk" to one another? or do i need to just leave them to it, ziggy was not a problem to introduce, my old boys simply ignore him!

amanda

If they are not actually fighting and there's no outward aggression, other than a bit of bravado noise, then that's quite normal. It takes a good week for them to integrate sometimes longer, especially with adult cats. A good way of getting them to interact with each other is to get them to play with something. A rod toy is usually irresistable and they forget they are sitting next to a stranger and concentrate on the game.

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we had one huge bout of agression where they both seemd to fly at one another, we are not sure which but someone pooped all over the floor, they only fought fora fraction of a second and both went the other way, since then as i say its more growls and busy tales, Duchess the new cat seems incredibly "twitchy" we were told she was used to children as the previous owner had a 3 yr old who would visit at weekend. but she jumps at the slightest thing, including one of these mechanical air freshners that spray every 20 odd minutes EVERY time it spray she leaps! how best to reassure her?

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Emily



Star.


"Cat people are different to the extent that they generally are not conformists - How could they be with a cat running their lives?"