Anyhow, along with them came Chiyo. Chiyo is a cat that belonged to Yubo's younger brother, Ei-chan. Ei-chan got her with his gf at the time, and was stuck with her when they parted ways. Unfortunately, Chiyo did not get along with Kombu, the resident cat of the house. Kombu, being the itty-bitty scaredy cat that she is (looking at her, you would think she was still a kitten), didn't care for Chiyo's playful nature.
The issue with Chiyo is that she was adopted as a kitten alone. We don't know when she was taken from her litter, but I suspect is was too soon. It seems she's never really been exposed to too many other cats. She does not know how to hold back on her bites when playing, as Yubo's poor hand found out recently. She's incredibly outgoing and friendly with humans, but no one knew how she would react to another cat.
Until now, Chiyo had been locked up in Ei-chan's upstairs room by herself since Kombu would have nothing to do with her. Since everyone in the house works, she was often left on her own for most of the day, only getting attention a few hours a day at most. So it's easy to say she became very attention hungry.
When visiting, her cute little chirps and barks melted my heart. I had been joking with Yubo about getting a third cat, but this seemed the perfect opportunity to really make it happen. If nothing else, we would have a better chance of finding Chiyo a home she could be happy in. We figured that since she's about the same age as Ellie and Tifa, and has a mellow personality, she could fit in well. The main concern I had was if she would rival Tifa for affection and attention. Anyhow, we wanted to give it a try.
So here's our new baby:
She stayed in the bathroom, which became fairly cramped with her litter box, carrier, and food/water dishes. I eventually came up with the idea to invest in one of those large cages and put her in the office.
It's been about 5 nights since she's been here. I've been doing fairly slow introductions, but probably faster than most would. At this moment, I actually have all three of them out here in the living room with me with very minimal hissing. Part of me just wants them to fight it out so we can be done with it. LoL.
Around Day 3, I removed the cage and set it up against the door for more exposure. They had stopped hissing and growing through the door so I figured it'd be a decent time to move on.
You'll notice in the picture that Yubo is in the office. Yeah.... we get in and out through the door at what would be the top of the cage.
I figured it was a good way to give them maximum exposure to each other in a safe way. It Chiyo was feeling threatened or scared, she could just run further into the room and away from the door.
As it is now, she's been excited to leave the office to explore the house. This is the second time I've had them all out at once, and I'm actually quite surprised at how well it's going. They ignore each other for the most part, and as I mentioned earlier, the hissing is very minimal. I think they're just putting up with each other right now. Actually, more like Ellie is putting up with Chiyo and Tifa is indifferent.
Chiyo seems very curious about Ellie. The encounters are mostly between them. For a short while, Chiyo would actually follow Ellie around to get a few more sniffs. I've also left the office open for Ellie and Tifa to explore Chiyo's space. A few minutes ago, it seems Ellie claimed the scratching post I had in the office for Chiyo. :P I hope Ellie learns to share with Chiyo like she has with Tifa.
I'm hoping this kitty hierarchy will get established soon and I can do away with the caged office. I'm hoping it will only take a few more days (I've read that it can take months with stubborn and shy cats). Chiyo's outgoing nature surely is speeding up the process a bit. Ellie and Tifa's calmness around her is encouraging. They were both eating treats with Chiyo only 3-4 feet away from them. So far it's all looking good to me.
Yubo and I ran into a bit of tension though. I'm a researcher, so all my behaviors and attitudes and actions towards the cats are based on what I've read from other cat moms and "experts" (quotes because I didn't care to find if the authors really were experts). Yubo likes to work on his common sense and instinct. Some issues arose between him and Chiyo that made me really concerned about whether we would be able to keep her or not.
On Day 1, I made the big mistake of already letting Ellie and Chiyo sniff each other through a crack in the bathroom door. I was too optimistic. The hissing got a little intense, so I stepped in and started hissing at Chiyo, asserting my dominance. After two good hisses, she backed down and had no problem with me. I gave Yubo the heads up that he might have to hiss at her too, but without the context that I read, I suspect he ended up hissing at her for the wrong reasons. What ended up happening was she would go from purring and getting affection from him to turning around hissing and growling and running away from him. MIL and FIL thought it might be just a guy thing. She got neglected by Ei-chan, all these horrible things got linked to FIL (going to the vet, getting put in the carrier, getting put on a scary airplane), and now here was another guy that was trying to get her back into the bathroom or back into her cage (in the office). For the bathroom incident, I came out with a sweet voice and she calmed down and walked over to Yubo for affection. He then picked her up (and she started hissing) to put her back into the bathroom. In the office, I had to ask Yubo to leave the room. When he left, she came out from her hiding spot and I was able to get her into her cage without a fight at all.
But as of yesterday, it seems to have all blown over. It looks like it will all work out. Yubo got around to reading some articles about introducing cats to each other. What he was doing was trying to get the hissing and growling to stop between the cats instead of letting it happen, even though I told him from the beginning that it needs to happen. That was when I felt he was hissing at the wrong times, because he would hiss at Chiyo to try and get her to stop hissing, when it was probably that she was hissing out of fear instead of aggression. I hissed back when it was aggressive. Anyhow, a decent amount of misunderstandings on the human side. The cats seem to be going good so far. They've been out amongst each other for a good... hour or so. I'm just looking forward to seeing the three of them play and snuggle together. We'll see how that goes. :P
*Random note:
Chiyo means "eternal"
Ellie means "light"
Tifa means "manifestation of God"; other meanings said "appearance of..." or "revelation of..."
Cool, huh?
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