FELINE INTRODUCTIONS

or... Can't We All Just Get Along?

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When blending or adding new cats into a multi cat home, environmental enrichment techniques can be of great benefit.  Check out the Deer Run Animal Hospital web page on Feline Environmental Indoor Enrichment for lots of ideas to try to help keep your kitties living in peace and harmony.

It will be important to make resources plentiful for your feline family.  This means lots of litter boxes, feeding stations, hiding and refuge spaces, cat trees, and cat toys for stimulation.

Pheromone Therapy with Feliway can really help smooth the addition of a new housemate. Cat noses are much more sensitive than ours.  Cats have the ability to communicate via scent.  The Feliway Pheromone communicates to cats in their own language and sends a message of a friendly greeting. Here is the link to Deer Run Animal Hospital's Feliway webpage with tips on how to get the most benefit from Feliway.

Humane Societies often have fabulous handouts on cat behavior.  Below you will find links to some helpful handouts from some of our favorite Humane Societies on the topic of cat to cat introductions.

This link takes you to an entire series of articles collected from a great Denver Humane Society, The Denver Dumb Friends League on issues relating to introducing cats.

Cat to Cat Introductions 

The next 3 links are to handouts on cat Introductions from The Best Friends Society

Introducing a New Cat

Helping Cats to Get Along

Aggression Toward Other Cats

Introducing a Cat and a Dog

Preventing Your Dog From Chasing Your Cat

The Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT) provides this informative free webinar on

It Takes Two! Successful Dog & Cat Interactions Webinar 

These next 2 handouts come from the San Francisco ASPCA (Give this webinar a few moments to download)

Introducing Dogs & Cats

Cat to Cat Introductions

Introducing a Cat to a New Home

From The Feline Health Center at Cornell University

So You Want To Adopt Another Cat Things to consider before adopting a new cat .

The More the Merrier?

Veterinary Behavior Specialist, Dr. Lisa Radosta offers some great advice on how to introduce a new kitten to your older cats.

New Kitten, Big Trouble  

Another great veterinarian who enjoys behavior practice offers this helpful handout on how to introduce cats.  

Introducing Cats By Dr. Sally Foote

The Feline Advisory Board or FAB Cats is a British Veterinary Organization that offers great advice on Feline Behavior.  Here are some handouts with the Euorpean point of view on kitty introductions.

First Impressions

Introducing your cat to other cats

This link is to a blog by a great Veterinary Behaviorist, Dr Sophia Yin.  She describes what to do when there is cat fighting in the home.  Fighting Between Cats Leaves Family Frazzled 

Food Toys are a great method of environmental enrichment and can be very helpful for young cats with a strong prey drive to direct their normal and natural prey drive toward food toys and not other housemates (feline & human). 

Here is the link to Deer Run's Feline Food Toy web page