Hello All,

Firstly a bit of background.

About 3 months ago one of our two 3-year old Burmese male cats, who were
litter mates, died suddenly. Our vet thinks that the cause of death was
some form of cardiac disease or stroke. Both cats were best friends and
played and got on very well together. The remaining cat (Fidel) was very
lonely after death of his brother. I suppose this was the cat equivalent of
mourning. In the last couple of weeks he seemed to be getting better. He
was more spritely and started to "play by himself", that is run around the
house like he did when he and his brother played chasing. He also is a very
confident cat who always tries to "meet" other cats when we walk him on a
lead. Unfortunately he is not always that successful because he does not
understand cat etiquette...he just goes up to the cat he comes across and
tries a face to face meeting. It is like he is saying "Hello my name is
Fidel will you be my friend?" This approach as you can imagine is usually
met with a hiss, a growl and the other cat running away.

We thought that now would be a good time to get a new friend for him. We
primarily decided this for the same reason that we got two cats in the first
place...my wife and I are sometimes away from home all day and two cats
would give each other a friend and reduce separation anxiety. We selected a
good breeder and chose a male (desexed) Burmese kitten who is 12 weeks old
to be Fidel's new friend.

Hopefully so far so good.

Yesterday afternoon we brought the kitten home. We started things OK...new
kitten in separate room etc, etc. Unfortunately our emotions got in the way
of good practice. After a few hours the kitten seemed quite confident with
his new surroundings. We decided that a brief introduction to Fidel would
help the process (or at least make us feel better about things). We
supervised the meeting and in the main it went OK. Fidel in his usual style
went straight up to the kitten and started sniffing. There was no sign of
aggression from Fidel...just a little bit if hissing from the kitten. We
kept these meetings quite short (about five minutes) and then separated them
again. There was about three of these meetings last night. During the
night I slept in the lounge room fold out bed with Fidel (he sees me as his
owner and bonded to me quite early) while my wife slept in the bed room with
the kitten. This morning we thought we would try another meeting. This
meeting went well too and we even added a bit of joint playing with Fidel's
favourite toy. No hissing or growling from anyone.

Again all went well. I suppose by know you are thinking "So what is the
problem?"

At the next meeting after I had spent some time with the kitten by myself
Fidel started "chattering" at the kitten as he would if he saw a bird and
even hissed aggressively at the kitten. We stopped the meeting straight
away then comforted both Fidel and the Kitten. I think this behaviour from
Fidel may have been caused by him feeling jealous about me spending time
with the kitten.

We have now, after reading more on the web about the correct process to
introduce a cat and kitten, decided to take the process much slower and
delay any more meetings until Fidel and the kitten are more used to each
others presence and smell.

My main question is: "Do you think that introducing them too quickly as we
did could have caused any long term effect on the likelihood of the two of
them getting on OK?" We know that Fidel may not get on as well with the
kitten as he did with the his brother but we would like to do what we can do
to maximise the chance of a positive relationship between Fidel and the new
kitten.

Thanks in advance to all who take the time to reply.
--
Regards,
Steve
-----------------------------------------
Steve Remington
Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia

-----------------------------------------
Steve Remington IS my name so remove
the ".notmy" from email address to reply
-----------------------------------------
Great spirits have always encountered
violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein
-----------------------------------------