kitten introduction gone wrong?

[jockmcplop]

Hi!


This is my 3 year old lady cat, Moog, sat near my new kitten, Boudicca:

http://i.imgur.com/FuLQYqT.jpg (i can't get the image to embed for some reason)
Moog was a rescue kitten, and has lived with us since she was 6 months old. She is chilled out, friendly to humans and playful. She doesn't get on well with the local cats, but i think its because they're always peeing in her garden and interfering with her humans.

We decided that we might be able to help her be more sociable with the neighbourhood cat brigade by getting a kitten so she can experience a feline social group.


Enter Boudicca:

http://i.imgur.com/n0SMzSx.jpg

Boudica is a typical 12 week kitten. Playful, clumsy, hungry and massively confused all the time. And really really cute.

The introduction
So we decided to give Boudicca a bedroom of our house to start off with. We bought her some toys, 2 scratchers and 2 litter trays. We would have dinner time with one cat each side of the bedroom door (introducing the cats the way Jackson Galaxy said to). Unfortunately this space was too small for a kitten like Boudicca. She began peeing all over the bed. She did this 4-5 times in the first week. It wasn't spraying, it was sitting down and urinating.
Because of this over the course of the next couple of days we introduced Boudicca to the rest of the house, and more importantly, Moog.
N.B. Boudicca hasn't urinated anywhere since she moved out of her room.

The Situation.
This has caused some problems (maybe). Moog appears to be very possessive, more of her humans than anything else. Whereas before she was a very relaxed cat, she obviously now feels on edge because the kitten is running around the place 24/7 being noisy and generally annoying.

However, they fight regularly. If Boudicca enters Moog's personal space (may a foot and a half around her) at all, Moog will put her ears back, hiss and growl. Boudicca does this often, usually as she is playing and jumping around. This usually results in Moog taking a swipe or two at Boudicca, who then lies down on her back until Moog stops attacking. Its important to note that Moog does not use her claws when attacking, she literally just 'hits' her with her paw. There have been no signs of skin damage or scratches.
This can happen 5 times in 10 minutes, and occurs often throughout the day.

I'm curious as to whether this is 'rough' playfighting, whether Moog is attempting to 'train' the kitten, or whether they actually hate each other.


The cats show some rare signs of forming a social group. They will chase each other without attacking sometimes, and this appears to be a form of play i think. They will touch noses if they haven't been together and they can sit fairly close (a couple of feet away) to each other with no problems.


Thanks guys!

[meriad]

to be honest, some cats just prefer being single cats and don't really like other cats around. Your Moog I am sure will no doubt get used to having a kitten about but if she doesn't like other cats then introducing a kitten into her world probably wasn't the wisest thing; it won't suddenly make Moog like other cats.

But what is done is done and Boudica is gorgeous. I would imagine that Moog actually isn't interested in playing with Boudica and Boudica being the young kitten that she is has very little concept of what to do - her world is just one big fun thing to explore and check out and annoying Moog is probably one huge game to her. But Moog probably was quite happy with the peace and quiet so things to do to help Moog I think would be to make sure you play with Boudica as much as you can to give Moog her space, feed the cats close together so Moog associates Boudica with something good, but always feed Moog first; doing that will confirm Moog's position as top cat.

Moog 'lashing' out at Boudica is teaching her where the boundaries are so it's fairly normal. As long as there is no fur flying and physical damage I'd leave them (within reason obviously) to sort themselves out. Give Moog lots of reassurance, but don't overdo it.

They may never be best friends, but they should hopefully sooner rather than later learn to tolerate each other