: Resident cat not staying in the house when new kitten is out of safe room So, we rescued our cat in February and decided to get a kitten 2 weeks ago. We have done everything the internet suggest and kept them separate. The

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Resident cat not staying in the house when new kitten is out of safe room
So, we rescued our cat in February and decided to get a kitten 2 weeks ago. We have done everything the internet suggest and kept them separate. The kitten has his own room and our cat the rest of the house. At first our cat reacted badly to his scent and hated going upstairs where he was shut away. She didn't even come up to bed with us, which was unusual because she loves bed time. Over the course of the week she started coming up and stopped reacting badly to his scent and was instead rubbing her cheeks in our hands and started to come to bed again.

We bought a dog cage to put in our living room to put the kitten in to get the cat used to seeing and hearing him. The first couple of times we only left him in with her (under our supervision) for 15mins- half an hour. At first the cat didnt stop growling the whole time the kitten was in the room. We read online that we should show the cat lots of love when the kitten was in sight but we couldnt as she would start to growl more and hiss at us instead. After a week of doing this she got a bit better and could be in the room without growling unless the kitting started meowing. The kitten started to hate the cage so we got a baby gate and did the same thing but through the baby gate. Things started to look better but now our cat will not stay in the house at all. She will come in at night and come to bed when she knows the kitten is shut in his room. But if we are downstairs, even without the kitten she will not stay in.

We aren't too sure how old our female cat is as she was found as a stray - we estimate around 3-5 and she is neutured. The reason we got a kitten was because we had seen her acting nicely with some cats in the street. We understand that taking it slow and going back steps is good. But we can't even get our cat to stay in the house unless it's bedtime. I also understand that it has only been 2 weeks and these things take time however i am just after further advice to see if there is anything we could do to help her. We have also bought some pheromones one upstairs and one downstairs but they dont seem to do much

Is this normal behaviour? Will she ever accept the kitten? Is there anything else we can try?

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