Introducing cats in ONE ROOM.

[Insaneslug]

I’m renting out only one room in a basement currently while I’m looking for an apartment. My little boy who I found as a stray showed up and I fell in love instantly and took him out, fixed him up and got hims neutered! He is about a year old I think and After about 5 months of having him * (almost 2 weeks ago) *I found another kitten who is 8 weeks. I took the kitten to the vet in hopes of finding someone there who wanted him; however, he came back with a clean bill of health and I ended up taking him home and named him Poki. I bought a cage for Poki to stay in at night until they got acquainted and only fed ozzy while Poki was out of the cage to eat with him. Ozzy gives Poki the death stare, he doesn’t hiss or growl but he pounces on Poki like he is prey and bites him hard, hard enough for Poki to scream, hiss and run away in fear only for Ozzy to chase him down multiple times doing the same thing until I have to break it up (no blood is drawn but Poki is so small) I try to play with them both to keep them interested, however Ozzy just want to focus on Poki and pounce on him! What do I do? The best separation I can do is keeping Poki in a cage but I feel terrible keeping him in there so often. I’ve had to kennel my kitten and then kennel my cat to let the kitten out to get a chance to exercise without getting beat up. Im really conflicted on what to do, I’ve tried feeding them together *(which the eat together FINE, Ozzy doesn’t care that the kitten eats right beside him or even out of the SAME PLATE)* and playing together, staying distracted which is easy for my kitten and he minds his own business while and my older cat won’t take his eyes off of him and springs into action to attack him instead, my kitten is fearful of my older cat. I bought a calming Collar and a multi cat diffuser and at this point I feel like I’m just waiting until my kitten gets bigger to atleast stand up for himself :/
*Side note* I had to take both cats to my parents house and my cat was nice to the kitten! Even snuggled with him, and groomed him, which was a huge deal; however, as soon as we got back home he went right back to attacking my kitten, making him scream, and chasing him like he is food. I’m at my wits end, I love them both so much and only want ozzy to atleast not attack Poki for just existing. ALSO, my adult male IS FIXED, he got fixed a little under a month ago and my kitten is too young to be fixed currently.

[Ruth B]

Welcome to the forum, hopefully we can give you some ideas to try to make Ozzy and Poki settle down together, and thank you for taking them both in and looking after them. A lot of what you say gives me hope that it can be resolved, even in the limited space available. At 10 weeks old Poki is still very young and most kittens would still be with their mother and siblings at that age learning how to behave. A kitten yelling is their way of telling their siblings 'you're hurting me' and is part of how they learn how hard they can play. The fact that Ozzy hasn't drawn blood indicates to me that while he is playing rougher than Poki wants he isn't trying to harm him.

To me it doesn't sound like Ozzy is actually being aggressive to Poki, more like he has suddenly found a new playmate, but doesn't realise how much bigger and stronger he is. I do wonder though if there is a bit of a territory issue going on as they were happy to snuggle up together when they were both in neutral territory. So my first suggestions is to try and spread Poki's scent around the room more. Give him an old towel or blanket to sleep on so his scent soaks into it, then exchange it for a new one and put it out for Ozzy to sleep on, keep changing them over at regular intervals so they both get used to their scents mingling.

Before you feed them, give Ozzy a really good play session to wear him out, get him running around as much as possible, and stalking and pouncing a toy. Do it until he is absolutely exhausted, not just until he calms down the first time, let him calm down and then let him recover and play again. Hopefully he will then eat and go to sleep, I'd suggest that you swap him and Poki over and feed him in the cage and Poki outside of it, but close by, hopefully he will then rest and sleep while you can play with Poki a bit knowing that Ozzy can't get to him. You say it is a basement room, does it have any windows, and if so are they too high for Ozzy to see out of, if they are could you get a cat tree or even a shelf close by the window so he could spend time looking out, at one year old he is still very young and I wonder if he is suffering from boredom a bit anything to help keep him entertained would help.

Finally, this may sound like the daftest idea, but it can work really well with cats that are kept inside (which it sounds like Ozzy and Poki are), have you considered harness training Ozzy so you can take him outside for a walk. A cat doesn't just benefit from the exercise of walking but from all the other sensory input they find outside, it works the brain as well as the body and might be enough to mean that he is tired and wants to rest rather than just playing with Poki. I have even heard of some shelters that have to use smaller pens for the cats using clicker training as a way to keep the cats minds active while waiting to be homed. If you go onto You Tube there are plenty of videos on how and why clicker training and harness training can be beneficial to a cat, particularly one that has to be kept in a small space.

Good luck and let us know how they get on.