I'm happy I found you! Some ?'s

Hello all! I am a cat lover in Salt Lake City Utah, the proud purr-son
of Lovey, a two year old adopted dilute tortie who loves my husband and
tolerates me. I am a firm believer in adoption and non declawing;
neutering when young, and that fur people are people too (my husband &
kids think I'm a little nuts).

Dan M...

Welcome, Barbara! I'm glad you found us. This is an excellent group of
people, and we are all absolute cat-nuts.

I adopted a forlorn long term cage resident last year this time, and we
had nine months of fun and sadness. Ginger had a very sad combo of
wanting to be on or by me and a very unpredictable tolerance to
physical contact. As background, I am 52, the daughter of a
veterinarian, and have "owned" cats since I was 7 years old. I'm
experienced in "cat language" both verbal & non. I learned Ginger's
cues, and survived many scratches and a couple of minor bites in the
process. Ginger was 6 yrs old and Lovey a little over 1 when Ginger
joined our family. They NEVER got along. Although Lovey has our three
little dogs whipped into shape, she lived in fear of Ginger.
To shorten my long sad story in March of this year Ginger, completely
unprovoked, while sitting on my lap jumped up and bit my face, missing
my left eye by 1 inch. This was the second unprovoked severe bite in 8
weeks, and it became seriously infected just as the first one had (IV
antibiotics & all that great stuff. This bite was so severe it
required 5 stitches- even though it was a cat bite, it was a gaping
wound on my forehead & the ER decided it had to be stitched). I had
Ginger euthanized the next day at Animal Control, after contacting the
agency I had adopted her from and they said she needed to be
euthanized, she was too dangerous to try to adopt out again. It broke
my heart to have to do this - I tried so hard with her and I know she
was probably abused / damaged long before she came into our home.
So now it's kitten season. My Dad (the vet) suggested I try again with
a male young kitten. I have a couple of questions.
Should I get 2 kittens to keep each other company and reduce Loveys'
stress? Or would one kitten be less stressful? (I have a separate room
for the kitten to call it's own, and I do sslloooow intros to the other
animals.

Monique Y. Mudama...

Hi, Barbara!

I'm far from expert in these matters, but I'd think an important
question is, do you have enough room in the house for three dogs and
two to three cats to get along comfortably? It seems like dogs are
often less territorial with one another than cats, but cats seem to
want some sprawl of their own. The related question is, do you have
room for 3-4 litter boxes (a rule of thumb with multiple cats seems to
be, have one more litterbox than cats, and spread them around the
house, not all right next to each other).

sriddles...

I don't think that's always true; I don't think it's necessary to have
4 litterboxes for 3 cats. I always kept 4 litterboxes for 4 cats; and
nobody ever used two of them. So I got rid of one, added another cat in
the process; now we have three large boxes for 5 cats. It's okay by
them, and they're scooped twice a day. Nobody's complaining yet.

Is it true male kittens are more loving & bond better? Lovey is a
spayed female (spayed at first heat at 6 months old).
Thank you in advance for reading this BOOK :-) and any helpful advice.

polonca12000...

Congrats on your new addition! Looking forward to many stories and pics.
Best wishes,
Polonca and Soncek

I'm so happy I found cat lovers!

Chakolate...

Try to get littermates if you can. I don't think the gender makes any
difference; at least, that's been my experience.

Barbara

sriddles...

Hi Barbara, and welcome. I'm no expert by any means, but a couple of
things to consider: If you get two, kittens they'll play with each
other mostly and won't pester Lovey so much. OTOH, they'll bond with
each other, but in the process, with a slow intro like you said, Lovey
should learn to tolerate them and hopefully even like them. :-)
It would also be nice if you could find a calm, laid-back adult too;
they're so hard to place at shelters during kitten season.
I think your dad is right, or at least according to my household he is.
My boys are very laid-back, very calm and accept new cats readily. My
girls are another story. They seem far more territorial and just plain
cranky when they're not getting their way. (which isn't too often, LOL)
Good luck. And again, welcome to the group.

Dan M...

I'm so sorry to hear of the problems with Ginger. Things like that are
very sad, but they do sometimes happen.

As to one kitten or two, that depends a lot on Lovey and on your phsyical
layout. It sounds like Lovey has pretty well mastered the household, so
two kittens might be well within her tolerance. And there is something to
be said for adding kittens 2 at a time, so they will have each other to
play with and won't always be bugging Lovey.

When we first adopted Tabitha (black DLH, about 3 yrs old) she chose
Amelia as her surrogate momcat. She spent all of her time with Amelia,
which was fine with our other cat, Cleopatra. But Amelia did tend to get
tired of all the attention. A couple months later I rescued Samuel, who
was about the same age as Tabitha. From that day on, Tabitha and Samuel
were play-buddies. Tabitha still came to Amelia for grooming and
companionship, but when Tabitha just *had* to play she could go bother
Samuel instead of bothering Amelia.

As to male or female bonding more closely, I believe that too is more an
individual thing rather than a gender thing. We currently have 6 kitties,
4 of them female and 2 male. The one who bonded to me most closely is
Harriet (Harri Roadcat). I'm sure that's because we spent our first 7
months together living in a semi and touring the US :) But Samuel, Ranger,
and Amelia have also formed extremely close bonds to me. So it's evenly
balanced between mail and female here.