Last night I drove up to Allentown to pick up Simcoe.
The woman who breeds them was very nice and lived in a nice house. She breeds the Siamese “for fun” (they don’t have papers) and Cairn Terriers as show dogs, she introduced me to her grand champion male Cairn Terrier – he was a delight!
Out of the two litters there only ended up being two females. We spent about 10 minutes chasing the kitties around the room before we caught the girls, one of which I fell in love with almost immediately. That’s my Simcoe!
Now I know you didn’t really want to read about my journey to get her, you just want pictures.
Her and Caligula are slowly adjusting, there is still some hissing and growling (from both of them!). Regarding the introduction thing, I’ve always just put the cats together immediately, used my judgment (if I thought they’d really hurt each other I’d intervene) and they’ve been fine. But I figured I’d consult Google to see what “conventional wisdom” says.
I found the following strategies:
* Bring the new cat in, open the carrier and introduce the cats, they will be fine (yay I’m right)
* Keep the new cat in its own room with litterbox, food, and bedding for a couple hours, then introduce it to the resident cat
* Keep the new cat in its own room with litterbox, food, and bedding for a day, then introduce it to the resident cat
* Keep the new cat in its own room with litterbox, food, and bedding for a week, then introduce it to the resident cat
* Keep the resident cat in its own room for a day while the kitten explores the house, then introduce them gradually
* Keep the resident cat and the kitten confined to rooms, switch rooms every day or so for a week and they will get used to the scent of each other
Worst of all, pretty much all sites say that they are correct and doing something different will TOTALLY TRAUMATIZE UR CATS!!111one
Oh brother.
Cat people are impossible.
I think I’ll stick with my “know my cats and act accordingly” strategy. I have no doubt that they’ll be fine within a couple weeks.