Thank goodness I've found you again! Please advise

[TabithiaTansie]

Gill ~ thank you, you may be right about that, it just upsets me when my Husband loves cats too and we have so much love to give to others, but I think you are possibly right by not upsetting what we have with our 2 girls now.

Millys Mum ~ they were all neutered boys aged 7, all brothers. It really wasn't any problem of theirs whatsoever, it was our Tess's issues with them not them with her, they were perfect gentlemen! :-)

Tab x

[Gill (sneakiefeline)]

  to Purrs 

I agree with all that has been said by the others and just to say when on CC i rehomed two birmans to add to my family of Misa and Sasa and although the introductions were done very slowly, and there is not any out and out fighting , Misa and Sasa do not much like the birmans, even after a year. 

Poor Franta birman would love to be friends with the other two but Misa hisses and runs and Sasa just leaves.

Sometimes it just isnt meant to be, and although the situation with mine is tolerable, it is not as good as it was pre birmann arrival.

I think your two are best left to adore their slaves and home without any further intruders 

[Littlebobo]

 ...Awww that is great !

[TabithiaTansie]

Hi,
 Thank you all for your help and support.

Littlebobo ~ That's exaclty what we have done :-), we've set up a standing order every month to pay for them :-) that way we'll still feel a bit closer to them :-)

Tab x

[Littlebobo]

Hi Tab and  to purrs glad you found us after CC sadly closed down !!

I can not offer any advice but try your best not to worry so much I am sure that if the are such gorgeous cats they will find a home soon perhaps you could offer to pay for their upkeep until they find a forever home ?

Take care xx

[Millys Mum]

Hi Tabitha, sorry to hear how things went downhill.
If you really want to home another cat i would go for a quiet middleaged female and do the intros in the way the others have suggested. It does take alot of time & effort integrating new ones, im lucky that my 6 get on well!

I do think that 3 males at once was probably just too intimidating, you dont say how old they were and if they were newly neutered? A tom continues to smell for some time after being neutered and this may have upset your girl too 

[Michelle (furbabystar)]

Hi Tab,

Thanks for your reply on the other board.

I agree with Gillian that if you try again the introduction needs to be done in a different way, i really think that it was a case of "too much too soon".

But you must not feel guilty about this. Maybe its right for the boys to find another home - who knows.

What ever you decide to do i wish you luck

Michelle xxx

[TabithiaTansie]

Hi Gillian,

I think as I thought that the boys were used to other cats that our girls would get along with them. We thought about keeping them in seperate rooms but don't have a room where our 2 girls don't go. Jem sleeps in the 2nd bedroom and spends most of her day there as she has hiding places and then Tess either is on our bed or in the one room we have downstairs. They both eat in the kitchen and toilet. I guess we should have done things differently but having nevre done this before we thought we were doing our best letting the new cats have free reign especially as they settled in. We did keep them seperately e.g ours upstairs and the newbies down at night and that was the only time that tess went for a stroll off the bed! My Husband and I would dearly love these boys but it;s put us in such a position. I guess we were looking at what other people had done when introducing new cats, the people who we had known in the past and most seem to just accpet the newcomers, not ours! We'd like them back but are really frightened this time and couldn't take them back a second time so maybe we'd be better to resign ourselves to the fact. Oh god it's so frustrating!

Tab x

[Gillian Harvey]

Sorry you've had such a traumatic time! Its not much use to you now, but it sounds like you introduced the new cats too soon to your other cats, instead of giving them a separate room for a few weeks, while both they and your two girls got used to the new smells, and then introduce them gradually, pretty much as Tan has described. The boys sound as though they were used to living with other cats and therefore would have settled quickly, but it was obviously a bit of a shock to the system for your girls - three strangers suddenly living in their house! I've just introduced 2 new ones to a group of 10, and its taken about 4 wks for them to be nearly fully integrated, but even now I still have the two new ones in their own separate room at night, when I can't fully supervise all the meetings.

Its possible that if you'd done the intros gradually, your girls would have accepted the boys - but it I think its unlikely from your description of 1 of your girl's reactions, and I think you have already come to the conclusion anyway that your 2 girls need to be 'only' girls, at least for the forseeable future.

Try not to feel too bad about this, hard I know. 

[TabithiaTansie]

Tab & Lisa ~ thank you for the warm welcome!

Tan ~ I think Tessie has been rather spoiled by my hubby and I, she's very strong minded and even hates to see other cats through the window! (Our 2 are house cats) I don't think it was the size of the other 3 boys, although they were slightly bigger I think Tess just didn't want anyone in her space. We have spoiled her as she was very overweight when she came to us having lived in only a bedroom with agraphobia for 4 years, and with us having no children we treat them like kids! One of the boys was very nosey and interested in Tessie and this just put her back up even more. We would love the boys back but feel like we couldn't risk it again so I have to live with the guilt and upset of them being back at this Ladies house. In the distant past I had 4 cats which just didnlt get on so had to keep 2 upstairs and 2 downstairs it was a nightmare and I couldn't bear to do this again. Your method sounds very good as you took your time. I think also it was the fact that she saw 3 big lads coming into her house and not just one. I'm still very emotional today and it's been 2 weeks since they weren't with us!

I have so much love to give to other cats (I even feed 6 on our road who have all got homes but prefer to come to me when they see my car pull up!) I guess we'll just have to appect that we can;t have any more whilst Tess rules the roost.

Thanks again for your reply, I really appreciate this and yes, the calendar is with me as I type I;m looking at 7 very wonderful kitties!

Love Tab x

[forever_missing_my_boys(Lisa)]

hi and 

[Tan]

Hi Niki a very warm  great to see ya hear  and so sorry about the two lads fittting in.

I had a simular experience to you with my lad Rio when we adopted Gizzy kitten. Rio was soooo scared of a little 7 weeks old fluff, he wont come in in was always scared and i felt sooo awful and blamed myself for doing it to him. Wizz came to our rescue and we started from scratch introducing them both which meant absolutley no contact between them both at all until Rio was back to his normal self. This did eventally happen and then we started moving Gizzy around the house (still with no contact with rio whatsoever) to put his smell arround. We did this by bringing him downstairs while rio was out and while rio was aspleep the the bedroom. Once Rio got used to the "strange" smell, we started very slowly intorducing face to face contact. One day i let Gizzy out in our secure garden with rio already out there and they played together. I was over the moon however in the house rio would still spit and growl at the friendly little Giz who just wanted to play with Rio. It took another 2 weeks until rio was totally comfortable with Giz. They are now best mates althiugh now Gizzy almost 2 yrs old is bigger than rio now but rio is still the boss!
The time all this happened was soo stressful and very very upsetting seeing my little lad feel so awful in his own home. It took 6/7 weeks do to the introductions slowly but was well worth it in the end as we now have two very happy lads.
Just wanted to tell you what we went through as it sounds like you have had the same feelings as me at the time. It could be that your girls don't want any other cats in their home and would never take to any other babe coming in or it could be that you would need to do the introductions very very slowly with no face contact until all babes are happy and content etc. I was advised also that its not really the age of a newbie that can be threatening but the size if the newbie is bigger. Also the personality of the newbie is important to match your girls too.

There's alot of us ere from Catchat hun and lots of others that have found us too.
I wondered how you were doing when we turned into March on the calendar and your Tansie was on there. Its great to have ya with us again.
We are all here for ya 
Tan
x

[tab]

Hi Tab
Im sorry I dont have any advice as Im having similar problems with my 2 as one came back from the vets and the others attacking her.
I basically wanted to say Hi and  from another Tab  
love
Tab

[TabithiaTansie]

Hi All,

I'm new here but did post on cat chat and couldn't believe it when i saw it wasn't running anymore!

Is everyone here from cat chat? I've see a couple of names I recognise!
The following posting is quite long but please read it 

We've had a traumatic time 2 weeks ago, I'm still very upset about it and need a bit of support :-)
We have 2 darling female cats aged 8 & 9 that we rescued 13 months ago, no relation to eachother but we brought them back home at the same time, we drove 320 miles round trip to get them from a CP rescue. They are both indoor cats. After having made friends with a Lady who throughout her years has taken on lots of cats she found herself with 3 beatiful toms back with her. I met up with this Lady and we decided to take them, they were so wonderful. We brought them back home and within the first hour they settled in, they are also house cats. They were so loving and showed no malice or agression to our 2 whatsoever as they had been used to over 20 cats. However after 5 days we had to take the cats back. We took them 'om approval' to see how our 2 would get on with them. I'm devastated and beside myself with guilt. It was nothing whatsoever to do with the wonderful boys, they were such gents and never raised a murmer to our girls they were stars, but one of our cats was petrified and didn't stop growling and spitting and even kept weed on our bed a few times with fear. We tried most things during the days but to no avail. Our other cat who we thought would be the problem as she's very timid actually came out on the first day and although spat at them she did get used to them a bit but the other wouldn't come out of our bedroom or off the bed to poo or anything. We were very concerned with the stress it was causing her as she was diagnosed agrophobic when we got her last year as she had lived in a single bedroom for 4 years as she didn't get along with the family dog. I feel so guilty when they settled in on their first day straight away I couldn't have asked for more wonderful cats. I've been sick physically with it all and feel dreadful with what we've had to do by taking them back. I've been in tears all the time, I just can't stop crying, cats are my life. I have so much love to give to them all but it seems we just can't have anymore with our cat reacting the way she did, and after all she does come first. We are going to pay for the feeding of these other cats with the Lady we got them from. Reading up on things and cat behaviour is it possible we could have gone about things the wrong way? I think we possibly 'comforted' our cat a little too much when she was growling and spitting so therefore she thought by doing it she'd get comforted? If we hadn't have fed her in our bedroom she would have never come down to eat anything. I've also read lots of stories from people saying that sometimes cats will never accept newcomers, no matter what you try. On the last day we had them our cat wanted the litter tray and was so frightened ctarted a fight with one of the boys resulting in our cat running to take cover in the bathroom with a bloody nose, it was so upsetting. I can't bear to look at all the photos I've taken of those gorgeous boys, they fitted in so well. Any advice/support much appreciated.

Tabx