In recent days we have been giving home to a black kitten less than a month old yet to be named, the thing is that we already have a cat at home. My cat “Rubia” has been with us for 13 years now, beyond having lost her eyesight due to age, she is very healthy. But since the new kitty arrived I have seen her very stressed. She can’t smell or hear the new kitten without snorting, she eats very little and hasn’t gone to the bathroom for a couple of days. I’ve seen videos on YouTube and read several articles where they say this is normal, but I can’t help but worry. I’m worried that forcing her to accept a new cat will affect her health at the age she is, but I also don’t want to just abandon the new kitten, although if it turns out that things aren’t going to improve, I would be forced to look for someone who can adopt her…

Update: Thank you all so much for your advice, I will do my best to follow them 💜. Recently Rubia has returned to use her litter box normally, and although she still doesn’t like Morena (tentative name of the new kitten), I feel more optimistic, we just have to take things slowly.

  • Today@lemmy.world
    72·
    9 months ago

    We had an older cat and got a kitten. The kitten was super wild and wanted to play 24/7. Old cat"s only escape was to get on top of tables and dressers where baby cat was too small to jump. That was ok until kitten started patrolling and old kitty couldn’t even go to the litter box without little cat jumping out at her. My poor old cat was miserable and we ended up taking her to my mom’s. She was much happier there with no other animals. Few years later we got another kitty and did a whole introduction process - two days with new cat in a room and old cat in the house, two days with old cat in a room and new cat in the house, swapping beds to smell each other, food beside the door so they were eating near each other. They became great friends - playing and sleeping together. When my mom passed we took in her animals and now it’s a shit show! We have five boxes but all 3 cats want to use one and one cat just poops beside that box. There are nightly cat fights that the dogs try to get in the middle of. It’s so loud! Cats fight, dogs bark, husband yells -which has zero impact on the fighting or barking, and i yell that his yelling is just adding to the noise. Good times…