Would a 2nd cat be a good idea?

[Homeiswherethedogsare]

We have a lovely BSH cat, sweet and affectionate and we are all madly in love. She is indoors only and almost 1 year old. We are at home 3-4 days a week but need to work/on calls a lot and sometimes I worry she might get a bit bored or lonely.
We have been considering a second cat but I don’t know if it would be a bad idea. Main concerns are:

• that she is happy and settled and if we bring a new cat home we could essentially ruin her life (if they son’t get along)
• that we have a small space and can only have 1 littee box, will this be an issue?
• when we go away we drop her off at a friend’s house but if it’s two of them it would be tricker and we might need a cat sitter instead. Are these even easy to find? Fear it might become a major pain every time we go away and also that they could get lonely if we get a cat sitter visiting once a day whereas now they stay with the family

wouls you suggest a second cat in our situation?

Cats don't implicitly need another cat past kittenhood, our cat hates other cats but loves us. And you are right, there is no guarantee they will get on, especially when sharing a small space with no outside outlet. Just step up the enrichment, which anyone owning an indoor cat should be doing plenty of anyway.

I tried twice to introduce another cat to my Persian. Although she lived very happily with the cat I already had when she was adopted. She didn’t get on with both new cats. I think if they’d left her alone, it would have been fine. But they both wanted to play with her. She doesn’t play with anything. I realised my cats were completely fine in the day, during Covid as I was completely ignored!

I try really hard to enrich Penelope but she is having none of it. 🤣

I wouldn't. Cats introduced later in life generally don't become friends, they just learn to tolerate each other. Most cats are okay in multi-cat households but would be happier as onlies.

Just carve out 10 minutes a few times a day to play with her.

We got a second cat for ‘company’ for our first cat and she loathed him, to the point she would barely come in the house when he was there and spent most of her time at the neighbour’s house. We had to rehome the second cat as it distressed her so much. Unless you are able to do a trial run with no obligation to adopt the new cat, I would steer clear.

That said, we did the same with our first cat a long time ago and he got on very well with the second one we adopted and they loved each other. There’s just no way to know which way way it will go and much depends on your cat’s temperament. How does she react to seeing other cats outdoors (if she goes out or can see others outside)?

My daughter and her husband went to get another cat to keep their first one happy........they came back with two!!

Depends on the cats. We foster failed a cat because our older boy cat was instantly in love with her and we couldn’t let her go! They spend their days washing one another, snuggling up in the same bed and when he goes out (she is an indoor cat because of vision issues) she just pines for him 🥺

We did this and the honest answer is that it’s a gamble that may not pay off. It’s worked for us because the rescue did a phenomenal job of finding us a cat with a really relaxed temperment. It’s made us realise that DCat1 would definitely be happy as an only and it’s basically only worked because DCat2 is very very cat savvy and happy to not be the “top cat”.

We have 2 of absolutely everything because they definitely both get anxious over resources- so food, water, toys, everything comes in pairs and there are 3 litter trays. 1 of anything causes competition.

You also need to have somewhere for DCat2 to live whilst doing slow supervised introductions- for us this was over a month before both cats were sharing the main house together without strict supervision.