[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.