Magic - Wow!

2/9/18 - Hi Annette, This is the first time I have added a cat to a household that already had cats. It was an interesting experience! For about four days, we kept Max (formerly Magic) completely isolated in a bedroom and our other kitties could smell him. Our girl cat would sit at the door, sniff and then hiss at the door. Then we tried to open the bedroom door and stacked 2 baby gates on top of each other so that they could see each other but not have complete access. Well, the baby gates didn't quite reach to the top of the doorway and both Max and our boy cat were successfully jumping to the top of the baby gates. So that was a fail. So then we started allowing them to spend time with each other in the bedroom for limited periods of time. Our boy cat Tommy definitely warmed up to him a lot faster than our girl cat Annika. At first she wanted nothing to do with him and greeted him each time with a hiss. About a week in, we let Max free roam the house. Sometimes things would get too intense and we'd bring him back into the bedroom and let things cool off. There were about 4 to 5 tense days where we were always a bit on edge, listening for hissing or snarling. Fortunately, there was never any kind of physical fighting that was happening. But it was amazing to watch them acclimate to each other. I had no idea how important butt-sniffing is in this process, but they sure did a lot of it. And it was interesting to see which of our boy cats would ultimately turn out to be the dominant cat. It is definitely Max. Right now, I can see that both Annika and Tommy occasionally are a bit fearful of Max. But not so much so that they don't want to spend time with him. They just basically defer to him. We're not even three weeks in yet, so I'm sure they will continue to get more comfortable with each other over time. Max and Tommy are great playmates. They love chasing each other around the house, and wrestling with each other. Max and Anikka both love to watch the bird action outside. Max is such a lap cat. He loves to spend time snuggled up against my husband or my older daughter in bed (he actually likes to spend time on top of her computer, so he's actually a laptop cat). So, happily, I can say that things are working out great, just as we hoped they would. We've got Max's vet appointment scheduled for next week. Thanks so much for being a great foster mom to Max. He's wonderful boy and we are so thrilled to have him as part of our family. Fondly, Beth