Hello, I am new to this forum – I came across it looking for tips on how to deal with my situation. I’m hoping you can help me.
Boyfriend and I got our female cat Owl 2 months ago and it’s been going really great. Our only problem is she really seems to miss us when we are at work 8 hours a day so we figured we could get her a little kitty friend to play with so she’s not so much alone. We therefore took in one of my sister’s male 2 month old last Sunday.
I know it hasn’t been very long since Sunday, and I only really starting reading up on introducing new kittens after we got him (the sniffing on opposite sites of a closed door, feeding them like that, rubbing with towel, not letting them see each other etc). I’m having a hard time following the tips for one because I live in a 2 bedroom apartment and I can’t stand locking one up only to listen to it meow and meow to get out. 🙁
As to my actual “problem”: At first my resident kitten Owl hissed and growled at the younger one (Níels) while he just seemed apprehensive and shied away. Pretty normal right? We then proceeded to feed them on opposite sites of the door, sometimes having a little “gap” so they could see each other a little bit and with time, the hissing has almost stopped. What I expected to happen when the hissing faded away was that they’d sniff each other and start getting along but that’s not at all the case.
Owl has stopped seeing the new kitten as a threat so she’s not at all afraid of him anymore. Instead, if he or she gets into the room he’s confined in, or if we try to let them meet and great, she jumps at him like a play mouse, holds him down and frequently hits him over the head with her paws. If he meows or cries out, she doesn’t stop. At first I thought she was playing with him but in my experience, cats stop playing when they hurt each other. What do I do??? Will this just pass with time or is she just an aggressive cat?
I’m also very conflicted because judging by what I read on the internet, I should keep them apart, in seperate rooms, etc. But I just spoke with a woman at my local shelter and she said that was not going well for us because every time we let him out, Owl would see it as him crossing “her territory” and attack. (we have swapped rooms with them though, so no one should think of any one room as “their” territory). She said what we should do is try to keep them in one room together as much as possible while distracting them by playing with them, feeding them and essentially try to keep them calm at the opposite corner at one room. What do you think? Which approach is the right one? If it doesn’t work out I will have to give the kitten back to my sister and I see that my boyfriend would be really crushed because he’s very taken with this kitten so I’m really hoping we can work this out somehow.
Thanks in advance for your help and sorry for the long post!
Ps. I can’t figure out how to format this better, i.e. linebreaks. ‘Enter’ doesn’t seem to do the trick.
TL;DR: 4 month old kitten that we got 2 months ago is hitting new 2 month old kitten over the head, jumping on him and attacking him. How to get him to stop and let them become friends?