Fixing Cat Conflicts: Bad Beginning

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Having a big heart and being a soft touch can let us wind up with cats we didn’t exactly choose. There’s nothing wrong with that… until we wind up with cats who don’t get along.

It’s only human to want to bring in someone new and have everyone as happy about it as we are. But this is rarely our best move.

How can we set the best foundation for future cat buddies? Can we correct past mistakes to moderate present conflicts?

We must realize how the seeds of our cats’ future friendships are planted during introductions.

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What? We didn’t really go through an introduction process?

Chances are, there’s your problem.

While we never get a second chance to make a first impression, we can try to rewind this situation and and make some edits. We might have made these classic mistakes:

The kitten dump. We come home with the new kitten and dump them in the middle of the living room floor.

This is the most easily forgiven mistake. That’s why so many people still do it; and get away with it. Why did our boss, our best friend, or our Aunt Maudie say this would work? What did we do to make it go so horribly wrong?

Our boss did it with a cat they didn’t think of as a kitten; but still was. Their cat’s initial misgivings dissolved when presented with the fun and play the new kitten offered. Under-three is still a kitten, many Betas stay kittens even longer, and a lot of Alphas don’t ever lose it.

Our best friend did it with a cat who was just like the kitten when they were younger. That’s why our best friend picked that kitten. The older cat in the household had passed away, and our friend and the remaining cat were both lonely. Cats who are used to having cat friends will quickly see the possibilities, and are motivated to accept a new friend quickly; especially when the new cat is a lot like them.

Our Aunt Maudie always had a lot of cats around. That was the secret to her success. When there are a lot of cats to choose from, the kitten is highly likely to find another cat with similar interests and play power.

We tried the same thing they did; but we did it with different cats. And got a different result.

We let nature take its course. Our cat is getting older; we would like them not to be lonely, we’d like to perk them up, we’d like them to act like a kitten again. So when we go looking for a kitten, we find the most adorable, lively, rowdy little guy or gal we’ve ever seen.

It was love at first sight; for us. But for our cat who was settling into comfortable mental activities instead of strenuous physical ones, it’s an unwelcome intrusion.

The mis-match doesn’t have to be that drastic to trigger cat conflicts. We can choose more carefully and still have problems if we are resigned to the cats having difficulties and assume they will get used to each other. That’s what well-meaning friends and relatives tell us: to let the cats “work it out.”

Only they don’t. They rarely do. What the well-meaning are saying, since they don’t have a clue either, is that the cats usually arrive at a kind of armed truce and they don’t get woken up to bloodcurdling yowls in the middle of the night anymore. Or they have unconsciously adapted to creating airlocks in their own home to keep the cats separated, and don’t even think about it any more.

It’s a solution; but it’s not a good one.

When worlds collide. The cats who need the most introduction time are the cats who are least likely to get it; strays who capture our heart and we want to get them into our loving home as soon as possible.

If this is the first time we’ve done this, we will assume the second time will be as easy. And that’s when worlds collide. Because our home is no longer virgin territory for the conquering, as it was with the first stray. Our home is now conquered territory, and neither wants to share.

The older the stray, the less likely it is that their cat experiences have been good ones. Without proper introductions, it’s a constant state of war.

However it happened, what else did we do when when the cats didn’t get along? We fretted, we worried, we became an over-reactive bundle of nerves.

We inadvertently fed the cat’s anxiety. Whether it was our previous cat who was used to us being our happy self, or the new cat who is looking for clues to their own state of mind, what the cats picked up on was our fretting and fear.

This fed their fear, and made matters worse. And each cat blamed the other.

So what can we do now?

I’ll cover that in my next post on Why Cats Fight.

Want to avoid this situation?
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