Litter box sharing

by Nancy
(Napa)

We brought a female cat home after losing our 23 year old female. Thought our 9 year old boy would like to have a lovely female companion again, same age.

Well, they still hate each other after 3 months. The main problem seems to lay in the litter box and other territorial issues. Any help would be appreciated!!

My thoughts:

I'm sorry for your loss. Let's see if I can offer some insight.

Bringing an adult cat into another adult cat's territory can create quite the drama. Sometimes these things go off without a hitch. Other times, not so much.

The most important thing is how and when the cats are introduced, providing a solid foundation for the relationship. To avoid problems, introductions should be done slowly, and with preparation.

Did you do a slow and gradual introduction while the cats were kept separate? If you didn't, this may be, in part at least, where the problem stems from.

One solution would be to turn back the clock and separate the cats. Then, start the introduction process as though they had never met. You may have seen this reintroduction method in action in an episode or two of My Cat from Hell.

I've outlined the particulars in another post on (how to introduce a stray cat into a home with a resident cat, which was based on a reader's question after they had done an improper introduction.

You can click that link and read that post for the gory details. In a nutshell, cats are very territorial, and placing two cats together and hoping they work out how to time share the resources is a gamble. It may be fine, but many times it is not.

Even when a slow introduction is done, enough resources need to be available for each cat. Each cat should have separate food and water bowls, and there should be one more litter box than the number of cats (so two cats means having three litter boxes).

I hope that helps, and please let us know how it turns out.
-Kurt