One old cat (mine) two new cats (hers) Catmagedon! Help!

[scottmandue]

Any cat experts here?

My parents always had cats while I was growing up... I have always had cats since living on my own so I kinda considered myself a cat expert... until now...

My wife moved in a few months ago, along with her came Lily (six months) and Chrissy (eighteen months) female cats.

I have a sixteen year old male who co-habituated fine until about a year ago when my twelve year old girl cat died.

All our cat owning friends said "just put them together and they will work it out"... I believed that too... especially with the kitten figured his maternal instincts would kick in... but... uh... yeah... not so much.

The old boy totally beefs on the girls... he get all quiet, low to the ground, slowly creeps up on them, then charges, and all heck breaks loose!

We have resorted to baby gates and dividing the house in half... our primary way of disciplining is squirt bottles with water.

We live near a busy street so they are all indoor cats... living in a divided house is getting old... any suggestions/help would be appreciated.

[vash]

keep them separated for now. feed them close to each other. we fed ours on opposite sides of a closed door. it worked. not gonna say they even like each other, but the fights have been minimized.

good luck.

[scottmandue]

Thanks vash... someone else has suggested that... only problem is logistically they house is divided by a hallway. Two bedrooms and bath are the girls, kitchen, dinning, living room are the males domain. We would have to feed them in the hallway on opposite sides of the door. Not imposable but we would be tripping over food bowls in the hallway.

[UconnTim97]

Keep them separated if possible and introduce them with short supervised visits. Let the visits get longer as they get more accustomed to each other. Keep them occupied during these visits.
We did this last year when we introduced a new kitten to our now 8 year old cat. It took almost four months mostly due to he kitten being so small compared to the older cat. They get along as fine as a kitten and an adult cat can now.
In our case, the kitten was approximately four weeks old when we found her. It shouldn't take you half as long.
Best of luck.