Announcement: New addition to our household

[firecat]

We have a new kitty! His name is Angus, he's a Tuxedo Cat, 4 years old,
and he is a bruiser at 18 pounds. We adopted him from the Peninsula
Humane Society. He seems quite confident and affectionate. We've let him
sniff noses through the door with our resident cat, Biscuit, but we're
keeping them separated for the next few days.

Before we adopted him, I snapped a photo of him in his digs at the
humane society:



Despite my having a lot of experience with cats, this is the first time I've tried introducing two unrelated cats. There's a fair amount of contradictory advice on the web. Any advice (to-dos and to-don'ts) from folks who've been there?

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

What queensheba said is almost exactly what I do. I add one "house visit" where the preexisting cats are corralled in a different room and the new cat gets to explore the digs by himself.

If there's much growling or hissing when they first see each other through the open door, I also add a baby gate phase where they can see, hear, and smell each other but can't effectively fight. (This phase is deeply annoying for the human as I need four baby gates to seal off a doorway and it's hard for ME to get through!) I've freecycled a lot of baby gates. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh -- and CONGRATS on the cat! He looks spunky, cute, and fun!

[firecat]

Four baby gates? Do you seal it off all the way to the ceiling? Or is it a very wide door?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Up to the ceiling. I've got a tenacious climber. :-)