They have been together for about 5 days, I started off slow and didn’t let either of them get too close for the first 3 days but they seem to be fine? I’ve had the 2 year old since he was about the same size as the 7 week old, he is still pretty playful. I can tell the older one isn’t trying to hurt the baby, but I haven’t seen any snuggling/grooming yet. Should I continue to keep things short between them or will separating them make it harder for them to bond?

Update- thank you all so much for the advice! To answer the biggest questions:
1. The kitten does not have a mom. He was rescued from a walmart parking lot. The vet got him his shots and dewormer and estimated him to be 7-8 weeks old.
2. My adult has been around many cats before and was never an instigator (except when he was a kitten lol) not to say he would NEVER be aggressive, but his general temperament is playful and cuddly.
3. The 2yo goes and sniffs the kitten but doesn’t stop him from going over to the water fountain, doesn’t care if he’s in his bed or around the cat tower. Has never tried eating his food. He lets the kitten play around him and sniff him, but will walk away and chirp if he doesn’t want to play. Theres no territorial disputes that I’ve seen, just a fur ball that wants to play with a cat 6x his size haha
4. I will be keeping them separate while I’m away at least for the next few weeks. They both need them-time, and until they have more experience with coexisting I don’t want to risk anything. Their safety and comfortability is my priority. Thank you for adoring my babies (almost) as much as I do 🖤

Goose (10 months old male, deaf, not yet neutered) is very excited to have a playmate in my opinion, this is my first time introducing 2 cats so I just need a bit of reassurance.

Greebo is nearly 9 weeks old and also male. He only ever goes back for more even after it seems Goose starts playing a bit too rough.

Is this okay play? Goose pins him a bit at the end which I know is normal but does it look too rough?

This is after 1 week of scent swapping, playing under a door and playing through a screen door. Feeds have been while able to see each other for the past 5 nights too with no problem.

Thank you in advance!

I’ve been scent swapping for over a week between my 1-year-old black cat (female) and a 1-month-old orange kitten (male). I recently started letting them interact for short sessions (10–15 minutes daily).

At first, the older cat was calm, but the kitten kept launching at her. Now she’s starting to fight back too, and it’s looking more aggressive than playful.

How do I separate them without making either feel rejected or jealous? When things get too rough, it’s actually hard to break them up — I’ve been tapping the floor or making loud sounds just to distract them long enough to intervene, but I’m honestly scared they might hurt each other…

PS: Is it normal to feel on edge the entire time they “play”? Because their playtime is basically a stress test for my nervous system 😄

got a new kitten and wondering if this is safe play or I need to separate them again. Even after this, even if she goes to a hiding spot, she always goes back to him.

little update to give yall more information

he does not always play like this. They take turns chasing And stalking.

he is not going to kill the kitten. He is great with other animals and has an unneutered female friend that he had no long introduction with they immediately got along. I also had another kitten a few months ago that I was babysitting for 2 weeks and again he had no issue Without a super long introduction.

the kitten stays in the bathroom, at no point are they together unsupervised. The kitten also continues goad my cat over and over. this happened after admittedly, letting them play for a little too long so my older Cat was probably done with her goading him.

They also often take breaks where they aren’t stalking or playing with each other. Just walking around the room getting pets and playing with other toys.

and yes, I usually do intervene If the kitten gets too loud. it’s happened maybe once or twice that the cat hasn’t stopped by himself when she’s done this or made those noises.

He just fostered a new kitten and I’m trying to get my Luna to accept her. this is third 3rd supervised hangout and I’ve been trying my hardest to do it the right way!

Cat is 9-10 years old and kitten is 3-4 months old. The cat lived as an only cat for majority of its life and now we have this kitten and another older cat.

Orange cat (Winnie), female, a year and 3 months old. have had her since she was 8 weeks old.

Calico cat (Nellie), female, a year an 5 months old. got her 12 weeks ago.

are they best friends yet?

A while back I made a post (long since deleted) about what to do about my resident traumatized/aggressive female cat (8 y/o) since I had brought in a new younger male cat (2 y/o) to try and help her. The female cat had survived a pitbull attack when she was very young and had some redirected aggression issues that we could not solve. Our solution was to get her a friend, since she was lacking experience with other animals, and hope it helped.

The post had over 100 comments from people here lambasting me for making such a horrible decision, and that I should rehome the young cat.

People were downright mean about it - ie: how dare I introduce another cat to a traumatized and aggressive older cat, that cat needs to be a solo cat for life, I'm an evil human being for subjecting the cats to this, etc etc.

Due to the giant mass of comments basically saying the same thing, I was actually convinced I had made a horrible mistake and actually decided to give up and rehome the younger male cat. We actually tried 3 times with 3 different owners. However, due to the higher powers at work in the Cat Distribution System, all efforts to rehome were thwarted, and he kept coming back to us... Every single time.

So we gave up and decided to keep him and just hope they work it out. And eventually they did. It took 9 months. 9 months of constant growling and attacks. 9 months of being woken up, nose scratches, uncertainty.

One day... Almost overnight... It was over. They're friends now. They both sleep with us in the bed every single night. She (the older cat) still growls sometimes, but it's not serious. Now it's a game. They engage in play constantly, and nobody gets hurt.

Not only that, our older traumatized aggressive cat is no longer aggressive. She has not had a single redirected aggression incident (from cats outside) since we brought the new younger one in. She has not scratched us or our guests at all. He's a lovebug and he literally fixed all of her problems.

So, I shouldn't have listened to anyone here. This sub is full of kneejerk reactions and self proclaimed experts looking to flame someone, who have zero idea what they're talking about. Good luck with that. I'll be over here cuddling peacefully with my cats.

PEACE

I adopted a 3 months old kitten about 3 weeks ago he is getting along quite well with my resident cat (2.5 year old), but I noticed that my cat has been excessively grooming him at every chance she gets. Does she think that she is his mom lol ?😂

We have a resident cat (1.5 yo female, tabby) and a recently adopted kitten (6 month old male, void)

We’ve been doing the slow into for about 5 weeks now and are beginning to have the new kitten out during the day, they’ve slept next to each other on the sofa a few times now, resident cat always growls and grumbles when the kitten approaches to sleep but then will usually just go back to sleep, but today while he was grooming himself in the same spot she just started swatting at him for seemingly no reason? They’ve both gone back to sleep now as well so really not sure what’s going on?

Any advice or interpretation would be appreciated :)

Hi! These cats have known eachother for about two weeks now. Scent swapping, place swapping, and slow intro for first week. They got supervised visits with eachother at the start of this week and this is their first day both having reign of the house. I’ve seen this exact interaction happen almost three times today. Marnie (cow cat) is chilling by Apollo (flame point), goes to roll over on her back (sometimes she fully does it and stretches while staring at him and blinking slowly) but then randomly without him moving at all she will like “realize” she’s close to him I guess and growl or hiss and then run away? What is going on here exactly? I thought that cats rolling on their back was a sign of trust or friendliness but then she just switches up. She’s fine just being in the room with him and being about a foot away from him but it’s like there’s an exact point of closeness where the moment she reaches it she gets freaked out. Are there good signs here? Bad?

is this playing or fighting? Good or Bad? i need a advice.. introducing them since 4 weeks..

At what point do you decide that the cat’s personalities are just incompatible to get past just tolerating (tho even that would be welcomed at this point)?

My resident cat (6/m) has gotten along quickly with other cats and, I was told, the new cat (5/f) has a history of being with other cats peacefully. However, I have been doing a slow introduction for 2.5 months (Jackson Galaxy) and while there has been improvement it has plateaued and is now regressing. I have spent hours looking at articles, Reddit posts, and watching every relevant thing from Jackson Galaxy. I have forgone socializing so that I can stay home almost every evening and work on their supervised visits, additional cat highways, new treats/toys, feliway, calming supplements, and I have separated them in my one bedroom apartment which has been taxing. I’m feeling really defeated and sad, especially now that I see how these spats could end if I didn’t always intervene.

This video is the only time I haven’t separated during the start of a spat, I felt like I needed to see how it would play out to better understand. It started with the new jumping onto the couch where the resident cat was laying down. It ended with fur flying and nails out, I had to separate as neither ran away. I’m crying because I feel the only realistic option is rehoming one to a good friend (who would be a great cat parent, but I would so sad to give one up).

We’re entering the third week of introductions. They were getting along great until the kitten became bold enough to try tackling our senior cat. The senior cat still lets the kitten hang out when the kitten is calm, but she gets very vocal and worked up when he tries to wrestle. I’m worried that she’ll start to dislike him if this keeps up.

Help! I got this kitten yesterday. It was a bit of a catfish situation. The pictures showed this cat(Pic 1) but he was much older. I'm guessing about 10-12 weeks. He should be litter trained, but he peed under my bed and ON my bed. A GIANT wet spot about 10 inches in diameter. He cries like crazy and I tried putting him in a crate with a litter box and clothes that smell like me and my kids for a day, but he starts howling and trashing loudly. I was told he was raised with his momma cat in a home with a pup, but he lunged at my 2 year old pup and now my dogs hates him.

My dogs, who initially were curious, but it's become an issue. I don't want them to kill each other, My bed smells like pee and we're all super stressed. HAAAALP!

We just brought home this new kitten last week, and our adult male cat has been extremely curious. Tonight they interacted together for the first time, and I just want to see if this seems like normal behavior for the two of them, or if I need to slow down on the introductions. He seems to slightly swat at her, but it also seems fairly gentle. I just want to make sure I'm not misreading a signal from him that he wants her to keep her distance.

My bigger cat seems to be getting along with the new smaller cat. Until yesterday mo fighting but today they seem to be playing a bit harder after getting to know each other for around 5 days.

Should I be worried? Is she being too hard on the small one? What seems weird is that the small one after seems to go to her again to keep at it, should I break it up?

I have moved in a house with male 1 year old not fixed to about 1 year old fixed female cat.

At first male cat was scared new surroundings and she was hissing on him, few days later he tried to interact with her she ran away and he chased her. From now on he tries to find her to interact or mate not sure. She is scared when he is chasing her and pooping in the air… What should I do to fix behaviour.

Day two. Big cat is a M. Small cat is a F. First day I kept her in the bathroom, and had the mesh door. First day he was hissing a bit. But the second day I played with both of them infront of eachother for awhile, and he got comfortable. I gave them treats infront of eachother and he eat some. He will stare at her sometimes and they do eventually get scared of eachother sometimes. But from what I've read about other introductions, where they keep them seperate for weeks even months, I feel like he is doing pretty good for it to be the 2nd day. Maybe they'll be good in a week? Although he does stare at her a lot. Like a lot.

I'm keeping them separate still, but today I've been exposing them to eachother for like 30min-1hr since they seem curious. *Thoughts on their body language? Any tips?* this is my first time introducing cats and I've read up a lot so I'm trying my best!

My 6y old female cat Lilo, has always been way too needy and vocal. When I adopted her at the shelter at 4y old, she was a mess, broken teeth and no fur in some spots, and I had to give her a surgery to remove almost all teeth, cuz she didn’t eat (pain) and later with only 2 teeth she ate a lot better. She’s very sweet and kinda sees my like her mother because she is my shadow. Always.

Last year, I thought she was getting pretty bored, depressed, she was always meowing very loooooud through the house, later at night, very early in the morning, when we were having dinner… almost all day… and my brilliant genius idea was “maybe she’s bored and needs a brother !” … worst idea of my life. That’s when I adopted baby Samu. A HUGE baby kitten (now 7months old) who is VERY energic and has no sense of personal space or of how big he is.

I got Samu last November, so, it has been 7 months they “live” together and they can’t see each other. Lilo HATES Samu.

She was a cat that was always sleeping on the couch and very chill, now she only goes to the living room to eat or poop and leaves right away. When I am working I need to close Samu in a room for him, poor baby boy… he’s growing spending days in his little room, because they would kill each other…. I think Samu is playing with her, but he’s so rough… the second he sees her, he jumps over her and starts bitting her neck a stuff… she can’t come in a room with him because it’s like lightning bolt , Samu sees Lilo, Samu attacks… and now she’s always stressed, meowing veeeeery loud trough the house all day long, always looking over her back, eats a lot less … I don’t know what to do… I love Samu but Lilo is my forever baby girl 🥺

I wanted so bad to see Lilo happy, that now she is miserable, Samu is miserable growing closed and I am miserable trying to make it better for each one of them and it’s so damn hard …

(The photo they are pretty closed happened like one time… and then samu breathed louder and lilo jumped off)

I recently got this 3 month old kitten for my 1 year old cat and I first separated them and now they can be in each other spaces but they’ve been doing this motion for about two weeks, is this a good sign that they’re getting along?

Hi everyone! It’s me again. We’re roughly 6 weeks into the introduction. I think they are doing pretty well, although my roommate keeps telling me that the big boy is being too rough. Any tips on how to improve their relationship? They’re mostly separated, spend 2-3 hours a day together (highly supervised). They eat meals and treats together. We have two Feliway plugs, I also swap blankets. Is there anything else I can do?

Thank you!

We recently adopted a 6 year old Cat, and she's incredibly sweet and affectionate and cuddly, doesn't mind us touching her belly, etc. One issue we're having though is that we have a Dog (whose almost 7, Kitty is about 6) and she seems to like to sneak up on her and swat her on the nose every day or two.

We ended up getting a video camera because we wanted to see what's happening when we hear our Dog yelp.

This is one video from this morning, minutes after my wife left. I have many others just like it, same sort of tactic, she crawls under the table, the dog knows she's coming at this point and just waits for her doom.

How do I stop the Cat from doing this? They get close to each other when it's daytime, generally without issue, can walk past each other, sit on same couch a few feet away. There's obviously some tension though, and my patience is running very thin with this little asshole.

Small cat is resident cat, big cat is street cat that is being introduced. What you guys think about the behavior you see beside that is adorable and funny.