Advice needed please - integrating a new adult cat into a one cat household.

[OldBloodCallsToOldBlood]

Sorry, this is long.

DH accidentally let another cat into our house five days ago. In his defense, ours is ginger and white and miaows and knocks at the door to be let in. The 'new' cat is ginger and white, and knocked at our door and miaowed to be let in...

The new cat is definitely a stray. We've spoken to neighbours and she's been hanging around the nearby streets for weeks. We've taken her to the PDSA and there is no chip, plus her ears are sunburned and she was underweight and dehydrated. No idea if she's neutered as she'd have to be shaved to check for the surgical scar. She's about 3-5 years old, going by her teeth and face shape.

She's with us for now as we're trying to find her owners, if that's possible. Then we're looking at finding a shelter place for her. Our cat is a six year old neutered male and very, very passive. He is easily dominated, but isn't happy being under another cat.

We're using Feliway and all the amateur cat-psychology we know, like feeding our male first and the stray female second; giving a treat to our male in front of the female and not giving her one, ignoring her completely when he's around and making a huge fuss over him, etc.

We don't know if we'll be able to find a shelter place as the PDSA told us the local ones are all pretty full and recommended one thirty miles away that we can't get to as we don't drive. So we might be looking at keeping this girl for a while until we can find a suitable home, but I really want to be fair to both cats and I'm not sure of the best way to go about it.

Any advice appreciated!

As I just said on a similar thread I always use a dog crate to introduce new cats. I set up the crate with a bed and a small litter tray and a sheet over part of it so the cat has somewhere that feels 'safe'. And I put the crate in a well-used part of the house so that the new cat can get used to the house and the existing cats can get used to the new cat without feeling threatened. I would keep it in there for generally two to three weeks, depending on how i was going.

I would let the new cat out for a stretch and a walk around every so often though while the existing cat/s are in a different room.

It seems to work really well.

5 Days is really early, it's probably equivalant to 5 minutes in human time. You wouldnt want to cohabit with someone you met 5 minutes ago either.

I'd just feed them separately in-case she has food anxiety caused by the being stray thing.

If they aren't rolling around the carpet taking lumps out of each other it's actually not going that badly.

Poor thing having sunburn though, are you putting sunscreen on her ears? you can to stop it happening again.