A cat and someone else's kitten: how to make the cat accept it
Sometimes situations happen that you need to bring together an adult cat and a very small kitten in the same house. It could just be a baby who has come to live with you at the age of a month and a half, or maybe a very tiny one who still needs the care of a mother cat. We’ll talk below about how to make sure your cat accepts your baby, doesn’t harm him, and even teaches him.
Cat and grown kitten
Strange as it may seem, adult animals accept a grown-up kitten more easily than a very small one. If the kitten is a month and a half old, it is perceived by an adult animal as a fairly independent cub, and the main task in this case is to make your animal understand that this cub is also from your “pack”.
Before bringing your kitten home, play with it, hold it, feed it, and return home. The cat will smell it from your clothes and will understand that you were communicating with another feline. You smell like that kitten. At this moment, play with your cat, pet her, feed her if she is hungry, just a little, and then return to the baby again. Now he will be clearly aware of the new smell that comes from you. The kitten already has pleasant emotions associated with you – play and food. Now you smell another scent that your baby remembers. You can return home with him.
Your cat will probably greet you at the door, and here you need to let her know that you still love her, but you also appreciate the baby you brought. Stroke her while continuing to hold the kitten in your arms, then offer food to both animals. It is better to give a little, but obviously tasty, attractive food for them, so that they eat together. If the cat drives the kitten away from food, do not let her do this, sharply making it clear that the kitten is yours. Stroke the baby, then her, so as not to cause aggression and jealousy, but to form the perception in her that you are accepting both animals into your home “pack”.
After that, try to play with them together, for example by offering to catch some kind of toy on a leash or a laser pointer. The cats love it and it's attention-grabbing enough to keep them busy with it and not with each other. At the same time, they will get used to the joint interaction and smells of each other.
For the first days, give the kitten your shirt or something else as a bedding, on which he will feel calmer, since he is already a little accustomed to you and your smell, and for your cat he will continue to retain your smell as evidence of that that you are from the same “pack”.
If the cat sleeps with you, after a few days you can put the kitten in the bed. Even if he doesn’t want to fall asleep with you and leaves, this will also be another positive marker for the older pet, but most likely the baby, tired of playing, will fall asleep where you put him.
A cat and a very small alien kitten
Your cat may react more negatively to a very small foreign kitten, and in this case, you will need to monitor your pets more closely during the first weeks. The first acquaintance should be carried out in the same way as described above, with the exception that you will most likely feed a very small kitten from a pipette or from your hands. They become accustomed to eating from a bowl or saucer by about one month of age.
But you will have to be careful that the cat does not consider the baby too weak and does not treat him as cats sometimes do with their own kittens that are too small. The fact is that in nature, cats, like dogs, eat their offspring if, based on some signs, they conclude that the kitten or puppy is not fully viable. Since modern veterinary medicine makes it possible to give such babies a chance, they are often the ones who end up at home separately from their parents with compassionate animal lovers. But your cat, unlike you, may consider the baby not viable enough...
The kitten is unlikely to survive
A common reason for maternal rejection of newborns is considered to be the non-viability of the offspring. Due to some factors, the cat concludes that its children have little or no chance of survival. It happens that she is isolated from relatively healthy, simply weakened individuals. This happens if a lot of babies are born. The female instinctively realizes that she will not be able to feed all the children. This way she gets rid of the weakest kittens that need the most attention.
