Our new kitten and our existing cat - is this a positive start?

Question
Hello :)

We recently adopted a 5 month old male kitten, he is a wonderful, friendly and well behaved boy, and a joy to have in our family.

We also have a 4 year old female, who is pretty nervous with humans (although a million times improved fro when we adopted her 3 years ago).

When we first got the new boy we kept him in his own room, and swapped their scents as well as possible.

We let them first meet officially 48 hours ago, there was a bit of hissing (they were trying to get face to face to smell each others noses by the look of things, but as he's quite bold he would try and close the gap too quickly for our girl and she'd hiss at him.)

Also, if he runs quickly after a toy, she'll chase him and spit once she's cornered him, or they have a habit of hiding round corners from each other and then wiggling a lot and jumping out and hissing whilst on their back legs.

Each subsequent meeting has gotten calmer, (he goes back to his safe room while we're out or sleeping, or if we just feel it's best for him to calm down for a while) and today they have pretty much just hung out in the same room and slept, albeit 10 feet apart. Our girl will smell his feet and tail when he is asleep, and they have now sniffed each others faces nice and calmly a couple of times.

There is still chasing at hissing at more excitable moments, or if he gets too close when she isn't in the mood.

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Is this the kind of behavior we should be hoping for? Should we be doing anything, we just keep calm and quiet and out of the way, but do give our existing cat a lot of attention, especially after she has been nice and calm in his presence.

Any ideas if they'll be the friends I'm dreaming they'll be? I'd love to know if this is the way feline friendships start.

Answer
Hi
there is a method for introducing cats over a period of a week which allows them to meet each other but in a calm and safe environment. See this page for more details

/introducing-cats.html

As they become more confident with each other there should be less and less spitting although there may always be some.


As for your current situation it does sound like they are beginning to get used to each others presence and yes I think that the current behaviour from them is what is to be expected at this time. They may go on and become friends or they may not it all very much depends on how the older cat was socialised during her early weeks of life. this period is known as the sensitive period and is when they should be introduced to lots of new people and other animals. cats who have a good experience of this early on are far more likely tom accept another cat into their home later on in life.

of course the individual cats personality plays a large role in this too.

best wishes Kate