On the Comingling of Cats

It's not entirely clear to me that this will actually come to fruition, but it's just possible we'll be tripling the household cat count soon.

A while back, I got a bit more serious in looking for another mouser. I browsed through craigslist, hit a few of the usual dead ends, and eventually got in touch with a guy who was giving up the cats his ex-wife left him with. He'll be moving into an apartment, and can't really continue to have three cats and two dogs. We've been through a couple of failed meet-up dates, while he tries to get around to getting the vet records on both cats, and/or getting them updated on their shots before handing them over. But he seems quite adamant that the cats are ours if I still want them. So, there may be a rather vaster panoply of kitty goodness underfoot.

If it all does happen, it's going to be the first time in my life that I've had more than one cat at a time. (Well, there was briefly the second cat who abandoned Spook and us for taking up with the neighbors, but never mind.) Also the first time I've successfully (we hope!) merged two disjoint sets of cats.

Tinka has lived with other cats before, so I know she can, but it's been a while. And I understand that it can take quite a bit of work to get unfamiliar adult cats to cohabit amicably. My plan is to put the two new ones downstairs and introduce them to Tinka slowly. I may try some variant of Margaret's maxim of putting butter on their paws. Still, this could get to be something of a literal furball.

So, have any experience comingling adult cats? Care to give advice?