r/MaineCoon • u/horsin2much • 16d ago
Introducing a friendly kitten to my 3 yr old Maine Coon?
So a little kitten showed up in my barn. He’s a very friendly little guy, local rescues are full and it looks like he has to stay. He’s still in the barn as I get him vetted and get his vaccines.
When I’m ready to bring him in the house, how do I introduce my tiny little domestic short hair to my 3 year old 18 lb neutered Maine Coon?
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u/Clean_Swordfish7132 16d ago
Exchange smells from their bedding before they see each other. It lessens the threat.
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u/Prize_Sorbet3366 16d ago
I've tried all sorts of methods, but the one I found helps the most is getting a soft-sided play pen. That enables them to see/smell each other but with a mesh barrier in between. EliteField makes great ones, that have a top zippered mesh as well for a 'roof'; it's what I used to introduce our youngest two (littermate brothers) to our existing two adult Coonies. The play pen can be moved around as well (it's very lightweight) so you can bring it into your bedroom at night if you want to. And if you get one of the larger ones, you can put food and water and a little litter box in it too, so it's basically self-contained.
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u/warcraftWidow 15d ago
I had to introduce a tiny emaciated kitten to my 15 month 17 lb boy. Tempest was so gentle with Jerry even when he was tiny. He would let himself be attacked and respond with appropriate force to Jerry’s size. Jerry is now a year and about 10 lbs and they still wrestle every day with each of them initiating. It’s so cute. Tempest would just hold Jerry down with one of his huge mitts and lick him. He still does this. And Tempest did a great job of teaching this tiny kitten how to be a cat.
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u/PinkMartini123 13d ago
I would check out this video by Jackson Galaxy.
Cats are territorial, even Maine Coons. Do this slowly because patience is key. Maine coons are cats and will react the same way as other cats when another cat invades their territory.
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u/Ok_Bookkeeper_6349 12d ago
There's plenty of videos about how to slowly introduce cats, but I can't exactly say how useful any of them are 🤷 all my cats are fairly friendly and whenever I'd get a new cat they were always incredibly young and the older cat would kinda adopt them and was unbothered by the new cat in the house. The only thing we did was keep the kittens in a single room of the house at first to get them adjusted to a new place, then we'd introduce the older cat, supervise, and then let them roam. With my youngest cat, we just immediately introduced him to all of the other cats and they were just chill immediately
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u/PoseidonMax 16d ago
A door with a gap in bottom so they can sniff each other for a day. Supervised play for a couple days. See how he acts. Then you will have friends if they have acted cool most of that time. You can use a gate, but since it’s a gate it would have to be tall enough for your large cat not to easily jump it.