Expert: Kate Tilmouth - 11/21/2009

Question
We rescued a cat from the humane society to give a friend to the only cat we already had. It has been 2 months now and our cat still hisses and growls and fights all the time. We tried spraying water and we tried the cage but nothing seems to be helping. All the new one has to do is walk in the same room and the growling starts. We cannot separate them because our place is too small to have 2 seperate litter boxes and feeding areas. Please, any more ideas?

Answer
Hi
unfortunaetly not. Cats are not pack animals and unless they have been brought up thogeather or have lived with animals all there life they generally don't take kindly to another cat moving in. Unfortunately we humans make the mistake in thinking that our cas need a another cat for companionship, as I say this is not so.

At best all you can hope for is that they call a sort of truce and just keep out of each others way with just the occassional fight. However if they are in a small space this could be difficult.

Also not having two seperate litter trays may cause further problems in the future with perhaps one of them refusing to use it because it smell sof the other cat.

I'm not sure what I can suggest, either you will have to cosider rehoming the recent addition or the two cats will have to try and keep out of each others way. Nothing you do will stop the fights and in fact squirting water etc could make things worse as this just causes fear, they do not associate the water with behavior they just don't think that way. I have a page about cat discpline which you may find of further interest here

http://www.our-happy-cat.com/cat-discipline.html

You say you have used the cage method of training, I'm not sure if this is the same method I have on my site but I will give the link anyway just in case they are different

http://www.our-happy-cat.com/introducing-cats.html

best wishes Kate