Settling second new cat

[Newtotwo]

We adopted a rescue cat last week and she’s slowly settling in. We have a gorgeous 4 year old ginger boy who’s being incredibly patient and chill, but new girl (a teeny, roughly 1yo fluffy ginger) keeps yowling at our big boy.

She sounds like she has a really rough start in life (abandoned by old owner, got pregnant and gave birth, was injured and then taken in by a cat charity where she has spent about 10 weeks regaining the use of her legs and being spayed before finally coming to us).

I guess my question is, how much yowling/hissing is normal? All interactions are short and supervised and I do lots of treats (I flick them away from where each cat is so they’re not just staring at each other). Nothing is forced, and if it goes on too long I remove one of them to give them a break.

They’ve slowly started moving closer and sniffing noses etc. Last night new girl came into the kitchen (she’s been mostly kept in the loft bedroom, so she ventured quite a way!) and I ended up feeding her down here and my big boy just lay down about 2m away from her and ended up dozing off a bit.

All this to say, in spite of her screaming at her new big brother, does this sound like the introductions are heading in the right direction? Cute pics in payment of thanks!

I'd think they are heading the right way yes. All cats are different, and as you say you can't know to what degree she's been traumatised in the past.

If she's only been home for a week, sounds like progress is actually quite good; it can take some cats weeks if not months to settle as well as she has already.

Also bear in mind she may just be a very vocal cat. Boycat and Girlcat were both completely silent for the first couple of years after they came home, and until Boycat was nearing his end with CKD about 5 years later the most noise was a very faint mew. Then Tobias came home to keep Girlcat company, and he's incredibly chatty. He pronounces on everything he is doing, and occasionally just yells to get me to call back in response. His first few months there was plenty of hissing & growling, mostly at me as Girlcat brooked no nonsense at all & just smacked him if he annoyed her. He's now (2.5 years down the line) still very talkative, but the tone is much more mellow & though he can sometimes hiss that's usually only if he feels threatened.

Omg what gorgeous ginger babies!

This sounds positive to me. When we brought home DCat2, his preferred method of introducing himself to DCat 1 was to hide behind doors or furniture and spring out at him… resulting in squealing, hissing and furr flying. It took a good few weeks longer for him to work out that sniffing noses resulted in peaceful coexistence so I would say you are doing well!

Two years on, they don’t snuggle but do sleep on the same sofa, have the occasional fisticuffs and are thick as thieves as soon as any intruder arrives!!!

Thanks for the reassurance!

Positive. It took 3 weeks with us.