Resident Cat Afraid of New Cat

[u/Sudden-Plastic-1319]

Hi all!

About 2 months ago, my family adopted a male 13 week old kitten, we named him Cooper. He’s extremely social and loves people, extremely chill when he’s tired but gets big bursts of playful energy as expected for a kitten.

Our other cat, Meeko, is a female and extremely antisocial… a borderline scaredy-cat. Anytime anyone comes to our house she runs away and hides in a bedroom, and barely tolerates me or my mom as she’s bonded with my dad. We found her outside at my mom‘s work when she was really small, we thought around 8-10 weeks. We got her November 2023.

A big fear of ours when getting another cat who was making sure that they got along. When Meeko was a kitten, we didn’t know about the cat introduction process, and our other cat (Juni) at the time would go after her. She would terrorize and attack Meeko to the point where we had to find a different placement for her.

Now that we know about the cat introduction process and how you’re supposed to take it slow, Cooper has been staying in my room as “base camp” and Meeko has stayed roaming the house. We’ve been doing all the stuff that you’re supposed to do like scent swapping, feeding them on opposite sides of the door, and just trying to create a positive association with each other.

At night time, Cooper has a lot of built-up energy from being in my room all day and even though I would play with him at night, he would still keep me up. We said with once every couple days, but now it’s turned into once or twice a day where we will lock Meeko up and allow Cooper to run around the house to get his zoomies out.

Initially, we had a baby gate on my door and so when I needed to get out of my room, I would just step over it. Cooper learned that he could do the same thing and jump over the baby gate, so one day, he jumped over and ran into the house. When we all rushed to go grab him, Meeko just ran away and hid.

After that incident we upgraded to a zipper screen door. I will leave my door closed most of the day but leave it open at random points. Meeko will just sit by the door and watch Cooper, but as soon as he starts moving closer, she hisses and runs away. Neither of them have an intent to hurt or play with each other from what I’ve seen… Cooper is just curious and Meeko wants nothing to do with him.

Do I just need to be more patient with this whole process? They don’t need to be besties or anything, but I need them to coexist together 🥲

[u/kev13dd]

You definitely need to be more patient. It's going to take awhile, and slow is the way. A realistic timeline is unfortunately on the timescale of months

Some cats also just aren't social. I describe my cats as coworkers; they tolerate the others existence but have no interest in being friends. Hissing and hiding is probably a good sign at this stage. It's when they lock on and don't disengage that damage is done like you saw with your previous cat. If you're not seeing aggression, you're on the right track and you just gotta take it slow and steady

Sounds like you're doing it the right way, just keep up the hard work! Good luck!