Another Cat Question...

naughtoj

Cathlete
:)

Well, kitty is feeling better and is really throwing a fuss now!! His oral antibiotics are almost gone and he is much better, although still pretty thin.

As you know by now, he (I think) has been an outdoor cat all his life or atleast most of it. Vet says he is around 7 yrs. Anyway....since I have had him in now since Monday, I thought maybe I could TRY to integrate him with my current indoor kitty (she is 8 yrs). Several problems with this:

1. She has been an only kitty for years and is very jealous of other cats, although we have some that visit our backyard and she smells them thru the screen

2. He may still be contagious with whatever URI he had/has.

3. They may fight; he was the "studly man kitty" of the neighborhood, always getting in fights...

4. He won't stay in.

Can anyone give me any good advice on how/when I can TRY to integrate these cats? I would LOVE to try and keep him indoors and keep him safe instead of just letting him out into the wild to get sick again, I am sure! He is not fixed yet though and I wonder if that would make integration more difficult??? I think he needs to recover some more before the vet would let me bring him in for vaccinations and neutering.

Edie........do you know how long he is potentially contagious? My indoor kitty has had "gooey eye" before, I wonder if that means she already carries the kitty herpes and would be less susceptible to catching it from him?? I worry about him still though, as he has diarrhea still. He was tested for parasites and there were none, but I know that makes him more predisposed to dehydration, especially in the 110 degree Az heat!

Need help, FAST!!! This cat is now driving me and my indoor cat bonkers, even though I have him confined to one room! It is hard to keep them apart!

Thanks!
 
First thing to do is get him neutered!
That will decrease his desire to go out, and make him more pleasant to live with. (Even though your cat is spayed, if the new guy still has all his equipment, he will be motivated to impress her by spraying his manly scent on every vertical object he can find! I can't imagine that he hasn't been spraying already.).

Once "manly" cats can become "pussycats" once they lose the motivation to fight (cats with balls live primarily to mate, so anything else they do--eating, fighting, spraying--is all because of that biological imperative). I once had an outdoor cat neutered, and after that, he was always around my house and never strayed (I couldn't take him in at the time, but he lived in a warm crawl-space under the house, and I got him his shots etc. He had come from the outside, so was street smart, and pretty much became my "outdoor" cat).

After that, I've found that male and female cats, or two males, get along better than two females, so that's one plus.

I have gone through several "new introductions," and currently have 5 cats. Every cat is different, of course.

My Simon has never hissed or growled at another cat, and is quite copacetic. So is the newest guy, Rascal.

Scooter is jealous as heck of new cats (he's a "mama's boy"), and does the "I will rip you to shreds" growl/howl when a new introduction is made (there is never any physical violence, though, just the threat). He also gives the new ones the "evil eye" when I pay attention to them. But he eventually comes around (about 2 weeks until total calm and acceptance). When he smells outside cats through the screen or screen door, he yowls and sounds very scary!

Mandy is the least cat-loving of my cats. She still doesn't want to hang out with the others much, and is not really friendly to them, but just avoids them. If she's on the bed with me, and someone else jumps up and gets too close to her, she leaves. I call her "attack cat" (I even have a sign!) because she has at times whapped at the other cats.

Bobsie is a very sweet, motherly type, but she's not too fond of Rascal (he's HUGE and she's tiny). She now accepts him, but doesn't wash his head and head bump with him in the morning like she does with Scooter and Simon. At first, she grumbled and growled at him, but now doesn't.

Most cats will hiss and growl at new cats. I'm always amazed that two complete stranger dogs can meet, and seem to become instant friends. Definitely NOT a cat trait!

I volunteer at a shelter, and they have three rooms for cats, with no cages. There can be as many as 14 cats in the adult room. They don't all get along, but they tolerate each other (except for a few "cat hatin'" cats, who would probably avoid the others if they could).

All this to say, it IS doable. It just may be a while befoe things get calm.

When you first introduce the two cats to each other (make sure new guy isn't contagious first, though your cat probably has a better immune system than he does and could fight off the illness faster).

Then, get one of those baby gates that you can put in a doorway, withh new guy in one room and your cat having free reign of the rest of the house. They can smell each other (and spit and hiss and growl!) as much as they want through the gate without doing harm to each other. (My guess is that the guy will be more peaceful than your female. These things work best if at least one of the cats is more peaceful. Even bully cats don't seem to have fun for long beating up on a nice guy!).

You can get them used to each others scent (which is probably their most important way of identifying each other--I feel sorry for new cats introduced into the cat rooms at the shelter: even if they stay far away from the others, on a shelf, they are still suddenly surrounded by the odor of more than a dozen new cats, which must sometimes be overwhelming). Take a dry washcloth, and rub it over cat A's cheeks, chin, and temples (where there are scent glands), then introduce cat B to the scent by letting him/her smell it, and even rubbing it on him/her. Do the opposite as well.

Make sure to give each cat a separate bowl (just common sense, IMO, but some people make their cats share bowls, which they don't necessarily like. My 5 each have their own bowls, and they pretty much have learned to eat just at that bowl---though once in a while, they seem to decide to play "musical bowls"!)

Give your kitty lots of attention when introducing the new guy. Even when you are petting him, use her name and talk about her, and glance at her. (You might see her giving him the "evil eye" the way my Scooter does--funny, because when he does, I talk to him, and he looks at me with a "what? what did I do?" look!). Make sure that the introduction of the new cat doesn't change her life too much. Ie: if she's used to sleeping in the bed, make sure that she can still do it.


(Hmm...is there a word limit on posts here? YOu can tell a post is long when your internet connection breaks of because of "lack of activity". LOL!)

Hope this helps (and is not TMI!).
 
Janice,

Once the "secretions" have decreased, he should no longer be highly contagious. (Isn't secretions a discusting word?!?!?:) ) So when his eyes and nose clear up, he should be ok. Was he tested for Felv/FIV? I can't remember if you mentioned that in your original post. I still would recommend separate feeding/water bowls. The diarrhea could be from the antibiotics. Hopefully it will clear up.

As far as your kitty, she probably does have the herpes virus and has sporadic outbreaks. A majority of kitties have been exposed at some point in their lives.
 
Edie......he is clear on Felv/FIV. Doc said when he is "healthier" bring him back for his vaccinations. Well, I also want to get him neutered, regardless of whether I decide to keep him indoors or not. When do you think I can do that? I suppose I could call my vet???

Thanks!
 
I would say "healthier" would be when his upper resp. crud is gone and the diarrhea is better. Also maybe let him gain a pound or two. Anesthesia and surgery will be a stress to him and may set him back a little, but not much if he's feeling better before surgery.
 
Okay, Edie, well I called the vet. He said that if all symptoms were gone it was OK to proceed with fixing him and his vaccs. So, I am going to make an appt for early next week and hope all goes well. I need to do it very soon though just in case he gets unruly and I have to "set him free", LOL!

Next is "Moochie", our cute outdoor kitty!!! I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to bring him inside!! :) I swear I would have 50 cats if I didn't have a husband!;-)

Thanks for your help Kathryn and Edie. I will let you know how I make out...
 
I've lost a cat to Feline HIV/AIDS, so DEFINITELY have new kitty checked! And make sure old kitty has been vaccinated in the past year. The vaccination takes 30 days to take effect, so if new kitty is infected, get old kitty vaccinated ASAP if not already, and keep them separated for 30 days!!! Feline HIV/AIDS is contagious (symptoms include snotty nose, goopy eyes, and sneezing, as well as loss of weight). Drinking or eating out of the same bowl can cause the disease to pass from one cat to the other, so please make sure the cats aren't sharing dishes.

With that said: To introduce your cats, I've heard that putting each in a cat cage that faces the other, then gradually moving the cages closer to each other every day is a good way to introduce cats to each other "gently".

I've got four cats (3 girls and 1 boy) and it wasn't until the boy came along that all hell broke loose! See, cats have a heirarchy. There is always an alpha cat, and you have to treat alpha cat special or he/she will get upset. The problem we've got is that our alpha cat is a female, but the male is always wanting to test her authority and they get in lots of scuffles...mostly him just antagonizing her without hurting her, with her growling and screeching at him to get away from her. We've also introduced a new female that gets along well with the male but the two older females can't stand her and are constantly pestering her and bullying her around.

One thing you need to remember is to feed alpha kitty first and give her/him your first affection upon arriving home. This reinforces the heirarchy to the other cats and keeps jealousy to a minimum rather than a maximum. I made the mistake of forgetting to feed alpha female first tonight for the first time in a VERY LONG TIME, and she looked at me like "What do you think you're doing???!!!" and tried to take over the other food dish for "her" serving of food.

An interesting story about the cat I lost to Feline HIV: When I introduced the kitty that has now become the alpha cat in my household (Spookie) to Patty (my poor deceased baby), Patty hated her. Patty didn't want anything to do with Spookie, and if she got too close to her, she'd give her a swat. Well, one day I had to take Spookie to the vet for surgery (Spookie had lots of urinary tract problems when she found me - yes SHE found ME - and I spent over $1000 in the first couple of months I had her on vet visits and pet emergency room visits). So, anyway, I took Spookie to the vet for surgery, but had to go out of town for a couple of days on business and had to leave her at the vet's office while I was gone. As soon as I got back and picked her up and brought her home, Patty came out and greeted her and started loving up on her, cleaning her, and everything. They became instant friends. It seems that Patty had missed Spookie and was probably feeling a little bad for having been so mean to her before. They were little buddies from that point on until my sweet Patty passed away a couple of years later.

Sometimes it's the strangest things that bring cats together as friends.

One last thing: Watch your cats! They know when something bad is going to happen. They leave town. True story; A man who worked on the Titanic decided to quit his job before the fateful journey because a cat he'd been caring for on the ship took all its kittens one-by-one and moved them from the ship, down the gangplank, and to the harbor before the ship sailed. The man said, "That cat knows something," and quitting his job saved his life. Also, when the tsunami struck several months ago, no animal carcasses were found in the aftermath. All the animals had gotten out of harm's way, leaving only humans to die in the disaster. So, watch your animals and watch them closely. If they start acting funny, or want out of the house when they normally dont, or hide...get outta Dodge!
 
>One last thing: Watch your cats! They know when something
>bad is going to happen. They leave town. True story; A man
>who worked on the Titanic decided to quit his job before the
>fateful journey because a cat he'd been caring for on the ship
>took all its kittens one-by-one and moved them from the ship,
>down the gangplank, and to the harbor before the ship sailed.
>The man said, "That cat knows something," and quitting his job
>saved his life. Also, when the tsunami struck several months
>ago, no animal carcasses were found in the aftermath. All the
>animals had gotten out of harm's way, leaving only humans to
>die in the disaster. So, watch your animals and watch them
>closely. If they start acting funny, or want out of the house
>when they normally dont, or hide...get outta Dodge!

LOL Catwoman! Well, I don't think I have to worry about any Hurricane Katrina's or 100 ft tidal waves hitting Phoenix, Arizona (tee hee), but good to know!! Thanks for the info on the integration. It will be a challenge at best, I am sure.

I am not sure Tuxedo is gettting better now though. I made an appt for him for Wed to get fixed and vaccs, but now he seems like he has a bit more drainage from his eyes and a bit of sniffles. Yesterday he did not have any. Plus, I am out of antibiotics. I also was given eye ointment to put in his eyes four times per day but I couldn't manage to hold him still and he threw a fit.

Edie....I gave him all the oral antibiotics. Does it matter that I did not do the course of ointment?? I guess I will just wait for tomorrow and see. I just thought he was getting better and would be 100% for surgery on Wed. If not, I don't know how much longer I can pen him up successfully!! Arrgghh!!

x(
 
Janice,

I would try to do the ointment even once or twice a day if you can. If he is still not 100% by Wed, I might postpone the surgery. He may just be having a bad day! Wait him out and see. It is good that you finished all the antibiotics. Good Luck!!:)
 
Will do Edie, thank you.

I am having a horrible time now keeping him in. I don't know if I will be able to do it till Wed. I think he might be spraying now...:( And he is climbing the blinds....aaarrrrghhh!x(
 
I think he might be
>spraying now...:( And he is climbing the
>blinds....aaarrrrghhh!x(

On the bright side: he's obviously feelihg better! (but those cojones need to be taken care of!)
 

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