[cmrdporcupine]

The thing is, I like both dogs and cats and I really like our cat. But I've only ever had failures in situations where I tried to introduce additional cats into a solitary cat situation. Which is sad, because I'd actually kind of like to have a second cat here. The only time we had any luck with two cats was when there were two from the same litter.

I know some people accomplish this, but it honestly seems like the exception rather than the rule.

(EDIT: I should mention that our cat came from a shelter where she lived with a pile of other kittens. But her response to other cats now is... GTFO here)

[X0Refraction]

It takes a long time to introduce a new cat, we have 3 indoor cats all introduced one at a time. It took around a month for both the second and third cat to be completely accepted.

The approach we took was to keep the new cat in a separate room for the first few days to allow them to begin to get used to the new scent. We would then swap blankets to give them further time to get used to each other's scents. Then we'd open the door and allow them to interact under supervision for short periods and then we gradually increased the time they could interact each day.

I'm not sure this would work if you had outdoor cats. We didn't actually intend to get the third cat, but we ended up taking him in as our friend's original cat refused to acclimate to the point that he was spending all but 20 mins a day outside of the house and so they needed a good home for their new cat.

[UncleMeat]

> It takes a long time to introduce a new cat, we have 3 indoor cats all introduced one at a time.

Yep.

> It took around a month for both the second and third cat to be completely accepted.

Oh boy that's nothing. I think we were like 10 months. They still don't get along flawlessly but it is now tolerable. We did precisely the recommended steps (scent swapping, separate spaces, associating each other with food, play nearby each other).

[animal531]

It's funny if you think about it, in a certain way cats are very much like people. Those that are poorly raised or socially isolated when young have issues later on to adapt to having others around, whereas if they've been brought up properly (and maintain that through practice) then it's a lot easier for them to make new connections later in life.

It's probably true for a lot of other animals as well.

[UncleMeat]

It is hard because adopting is important but you can't really know what was in a cat's past. One of our cats is very grumpy at the other. This could be caused by something in her past that we aren't aware of. Our other cat also has very poor manners for a cat (he stares at everything) that might have developed by being raised with other animals.

What I wish people told us was that sometimes it isn't enough to do everything right. We planned everything and did as much as we possibly could to socialize them effectively and it ended up only fine after a lot of struggle. I had always figured that people who had cats who hated each other simply didn't follow the best practices when introducing them to each other. But that's clearly not the case.

[dragonwriter]

> But I've only ever had failures in situations where I tried to introduce additional cats into a solitary cat situation.

Cat colonies, as I understand, tend to follow the the eighth rule of Fight Club, which can make introductions seem unsuccessful even when they may not be.