Introducing New Kitten to Resident Cat?

I have a 3 year old, strictly indoor,cat that my husband and I adopted at 5 weeks old. She had no litter mates and her mother had "dried up" so she was our bottle baby. She has never seen another cat since we brought her home until 5 days ago when we brought home a new 7 week old female kitten. I did none of my homework and did none of the things suggested for introducing a new pet save for separate feeding and litter boxes. Everything is going very well, I think.

Wendy, the spayed adult, hissed at the new kitten 2 or 3 times in the first 24 hours. Wendy now approaches the new kitty sniffs and sometimes gently bats at her. They seem to play and chase each other back and forth, running around objects in a sort of hide and seek type game. There is no growling or hissing on either part. Are these good signs, or am I missing the precursor to a big blow up? I've never done this 2 cat thing before and am just not sure. Any insight would be appreciated. Thank you!

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Answer

poehere
Bronze Post Medal for All Time! 105 Posts

October 28, 20170 found this helpful

This is a slow process and can take about a week to complete:

The new cat needs its own room, litter box, and food dishes.
Separate the cats for the first day.

Now start to feed the cats next to each other, but the door must be closed between them.
Slowly start moving the food dishes closes to the door so they can smell each other.
Now prop the door open just a bit so the cats can see each other, but not touch.
Soon you will start to bring your resident's cat order into the new cat's room and you'll do the same with the new cat. Move some of it's order next to the resident cat.
You can try swapping places for an hour or so. This way they can get the smell of each other.
Now introduce them slowly for about an hour. See how they react to each other.
Keep doing this until they accept each other.