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Old November 26th, 2019, 11:19 AM
mwhyte mwhyte is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2017
Location: Toronto
Posts: 5
Introducing new kitten to adult cat -- advice?

Hi there -- We have a 3 year old Devon Rex (neutered male) who is really the sweetest, most gentle and affectionate creature we've ever known. He doesn't like being alone, so we decided to get him what we hoped would be a friend: A spayed female Devon Rex kitten.

We've followed the instructions on a number of different sites; we've kept her in a seperate room with the door closed, fed them together through the door, and introduced them a couple of times with her in her carrier. The last 3 days we've been letting them interact, careful to feed them together, give them treats together, and introduce play when things got a little intense.

The situation at 3 days is this: The older cat is being extremely gentle with her (no hissing, attacking, growling, anything like that), but he does seem compelled to bite the nape of her neck, like her mother might have to carry her around. We understand this to be him asserting his dominance in the hierarchy of the house (it is his turf, after all).

She hasn't been frightened of him really, and will come up and touch noses, but she's mostly not interested and seems to get quite annoyed after this has gone on for a while. She just runs off, or will occasionally smack at him and growl (not always). He follows her everywhere and tries to give her a bath often, but she seems pretty uninterested. In other words, if she's submitting to her role in the hierarchy, I'm not seeing it!

Is it possible that SHE will become the alpha, or that they'll just never be able to be normal? I have nevr had 2 cats before so I don't really know what normal is. But we really love our older guy and we don't want him to be stressed or upset. Any advice to help this along? Will he ever return to normal so long as she's here? Thanks!
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