Trying to work out cats behaviour! Help

[autumn1610]

I foster cats and really enjoy doing it, so far I have only had one at a time. However I have had one so long he’s basically a resident cat now! Anyway I have 2 female kittens which are just coming to me before they get put up one for adoption one is super confident and the other is very scared bless her. The other cat I have is a neutered male around 2/3years old. I’ve had them for about 5 days now and the past two days he has been very vocal as the confident kitten is now meowing and running about so he can hear her. He’s not aggressive vocal like hissing/growling more trilling/chirping and he has for the last 2 days taken to sleeping outside the room they are in. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this…is he stressed? Curious? Wanting to protect the kittens? I can crate the kittens so he could be introduced but I thought with the potential short time they are here it wouldn’t be worth it. He’s a pretty quiet cat normally and I was hoping if he got on ok with this, then I would continue with multiple fosters. I also don’t want to stress him out so I could keep him downstairs more if he is in fact stressed. Just looking for advice from those with experience

We crated our girls when we weren’t in the room and it gave our 9 year old resident cat safe circumstances to get used to them. Took a couple of months for him to Sept them fully. They’re all family now and often sleep in a bundle.

Accept, not Sept.

Some neutered males can be unexpectedly very paternal with kittens. We used to have an older neutered male who was a real bruiser normally (this chasing away included not just adult cats, but dogs and badgers from 'his' garden) but he loved kittens. The clever sod also once let himself into the room that our new kitten was in so because he wanted to wash the new kitten that we had just brought home (he did not approve of our idea of a gradual introduction).

The issue is whether your male has that quality or not. It is certainly a worry when you don't know how an adult cat will react to a kitten and you introduce them for the first time.

With our boy, he would have been happy to have new kittens to look after on a regular basis. I later saw this video and was reminded so much of our boy. This would have been his dream 'job'!

I’m just not sure how he will be but he just sleeps outside the door at the moment, which is cute if he’s doing it in a protective way rather than a territorial way. When he was trapped he was trapped with two little kittens (they think they were his) so maybe he has the paternal nature in him. I’ll leave it for a bit as they are just in foster so might not be worth the intro if it’s a week or two, but I’m playing door Tetris at the moment as the little one whose confident just bolts out the room!