Hey Pet Parents & Pet Lovers,
A few days ago I made a mistake shouldn’t have made, but walked right into.
As you may already know a few years back my kitty Beau and my mom’s cat Walker used to live together. While they lived together Walker always seemed to be the dominant cat as Beau is smaller and as Walker had been living in our house for a year prior. We did a good job introducing Beau to Walker at that time. (Making sure they were separated for a week, making sure there were plenty of opportunities for them to meet under a door, and making sure that both were rewarded for good behaviour when they got along once in the same room.)
In the past Walker and Beau got into minor fights, or as my mom likes to call it: boxing matches. I would quickly stop these fights by separating and scolding the two. As the fights became less and less the two cats started sleeping with each other while cuddling. It’s very easy to assume that after a few months of them being separated it wouldn’t be overly complicated to bring them back together, but man was I wrong.
Whenever my s.o. and I travel we always leave Beau with my mother, as we think it is unfair for Beau to spend his whole day alone as he is a social cat. This summer we left Beau with my mom and she reported that Beau and Walker got into a few small fights that were quickly disbanded and the two got along just like they had before.
This time around my mom asked us to take care of Walker. As my mom lives in a house and we live in an apartment we decided to move into her place so the cats would have more space to roam and play. The first day we arrived we separated the two cats for about 3o-minutes. We re-introduced Beau to my bedroom (the room that he would be spending most of his time in, and sleeping in at night.) After this we opened the door and let Beau roam the house free. Within the first few minutes Walker started hissing at Beau.
Now, Walker has been known to hiss. He does this quite often, even with humans. He’s an adorable kitty, but he does like his space. As soon as Walker started hissing I made sure to scold him and removed Beau from the situation, taking him to a big window for him to look out of. Beau spent a few hours looking out the window, before Walker started to pounce getting ready to attack.
It’s been two days and Beau is doing a lot better. We’ve decided to leave Beau in my bedroom and take turns letting the cats roam the house. If we were staying longer than a week I would try to re-socialize them, but I’m feeling like it wouldn’t be worth the time spent if they are just going to revert back to normal.
Has anyone ever been in this situation before? What did you do? Any advice?
I got my kitten Magic-Dash in june, who is also a rag doll like my previous cat Sparkle, i though they would get along as soon as he came home considering rag dolls are very docile cats.sparkle was very upset when he came home and he was very tiny so i separated them immideitly .one Dash’s first vet visit they recommended me Feliway Friends just so the transition would not be so stressful for both of them.about a two weeks in i saw results, whenever i introduce them she would sniff him and stare it sometimes she hissed and growled which reduced also.two weeks later they were to get along in the same room. i would recommend this product and also the spray which is good for cats nervous or stressed from vet visits, grooming, travel etc
Glad to hear you had good experiences with Feliway. If you’re the same Chantol that K knows, he was mentioning you were looking into Feliway! Weird enough, Beau had no response to Feliway the few times I tried it with him, but we had a much better experience introducing him to Kalista. If Kalista ends up going through a stressful period I’m definitely going to see if it affects her.
You can only control the situation when you have them together. Maybe your mom doesn’t do a great job with managing the two and this is where it goes wrong, I could be wrong. Anyway, anytime you go away from now on, you need to leave Beau in a boarding facility like Meeow Chicago. I would not trust your mom alone with the cats. You are going to have to keep them separated for now. Is Beau scared of Walker now?
Yes, unfortunately Beau is very scared of Walker now, but we’ve had one of our friends babysit Beau since this article was posted. I agree, I don’t think I will be leaving Beau with my mom anymore, as nice as it would be for convenience, it’s not a great choice for their health & safety.