Teri used to breed Cornish Rex and our Sammy was a daddy cat for 3/4 of his 13 years, living a pretty solitary life...
Though he did get to share a few years in his man cave with his partner in crime, Taddy Porter, so while he wasn't alone, he was lonely and didn't really learn how to interact with other cats (well, except at mating time).
Taddy Porter was only a daddy cat for a few years, before he was neutered and went off to live with a lovely family in Pennsylvania. But Sammy wasn't neutered until he was about 10 years old and he had quite the spray marking habit, even after he was neutered. Teri already deals with that with Disco, who is on Paxil to help him feel less jealous of the other cats, so she doesn't want to give Disco or Sammy more reason to pee outside the litter box!
But this summer she set up a big floor to ceiling cat condo in the breakfast nook and worked on getting Sammy used to being a 'house cat' and getting to know us kitties.
Because he and Kely are about the same age, and Teri knows Kely is lonely now her friend Bebe has found a new home--she takes Kely to work with her so she can get lots of attention and lap time.
Teri thought wouldn't it be nice if Kely and Sammy could become friends, and were able to share the nicest room in the house, which gets lots of sun and overlooks the backyard and lake. Both Coco and Brighton tend to pick on Kely, and so she isn't under undue stress, she is our guest bedroom kitty.
So, starting a couple of weeks ago, Teri started letting them have some supervised time together. Well, Sammy is so wanting to be friends with Kely, but Kely is so hot and cold towards him that he is having trouble reading her!
Teri had their two burrow beds separated--one at the head of the bed and one at the foot, most of the time when Sammy elicits attention from Kely, she lunges and swats at him. He can't hurt her by biting as he only has his molars left (he had very bad resorptive disease) and they both have their nails clipped short, but Kely could bite him and so she checks him over thoroughly every day for wounds.
Kely is more bark than bite, but Sammy knows how to act around bitchy females, so he just backs away and turns his gaze elsewhere and curls up a safe distance away. But tonight, she seems in a happy space so Teri moved their 2 beds closer together and low and behold, they both settled in and while kind of ignoring each other... she heard no grumbles from Kely and that's a good sign.
Before we go to bed tonight, Teri will separate the beds again so they don't surprise each other in the dark, but she is hopeful that soon, they will be curling up in the same bed together! That would make us all purr with delight!
