How to Introduce a New Cat With Pheromone Spray
Introducing a new cat to your home can be stressful to you, the cat and any other family members or pets in the household. It's a new living environment for everyone, especially the new cat. This cat must adapt to new sights, sounds, smells and family members, all of which may seem strange or scary. You can help your new cat adjust by trying a few simple techinques to increase how comfortable and secure the new cat feels. One technique involves using pheromone spray to increase your cat's comfort level.
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Things You'll Need
- Safe room
- Basic cat supplies (dishes, food, toys, litter box, so forth)
- Pheromone spray
- Old towel/blanket
- Screen door or baby gates
Instructions
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Create a comfortable "safe zone" for your new cat before you bring the cat home. This area should be free of other pets, drafts and lots of activity. Preferably, you should choose a quiet, warm room with a door you can shut. Place the cat's food and water dishes in here, provide a litter box, some toys, a bed and a few cardboard boxes for hiding places.
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Spray the room with pheromone spray, such as Feliway. Pheromones are what cats leave behind when they rub their faces on objects, and are the markers cats use to identify safe and familiar places. Use the spray at the cat's eye level, making sure to give a shot to corners of furniture, your walls, litter box and bed. Spray a little pheromone spray onto an old towel or blanket for the cat to lie on.
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Place the cat into the safe room when you bring it home, and leave it undisturbed as much as possible. Check in on your cat every few hours, offering comfort or treats if the cat is open to companionship.
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Introduce the cat to the rest of your home once the cat has settled in. This may take up to a week in the safe room. Spray the rest of your home with the pheromone spray at the cat's eye level, just like you did in the safe room. If there are other cats in the house, place them in the safe room while you allow the new cat access to the rest of the home for a few hours at a time. Continue to swap the new cat and the resident cats out of the safe room for a few hours at a time for up to another week.
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Introduce your cat to the rest of the family when you introduce it to your home. Have the family members spray a little of the pherimone spray onto their clothing and hands to make your cat more comfortable with them upon introduction.
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Give your cat time to adjust to your new house and family (again, this may take up to another week). Finally, introduce your new cat to your old cats. They will be familiar with each other's scents after swapping the safe room and smelling each other around the house. Simply allow them supervised acces to one another through a screened door, or place a few baby gates from the floor to the top of the door to the safe room (cats can climb over a single gate, so use several). Plug a pheromone diffuser into the outlet of the safe room during this process. Once the cats are comfortable with one another, your new cat has been successfully introduced to the home.
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Tips & Warnings
Be patient and allow your cat to adjust on it's time, not yours. Some cats seem to require no adjustment period at all, while others need to go through the introduction process more than once before they're comfortable. Just give the cat time and keep trying.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit cat 6 image by Galyna Andrushko from Fotolia.com
