First foster cat help! Does it get easier?
We are fostering our first cat, and we have a resident cat at home (male 3 yr old social and friendly cat). We picked up the foster (2 yr old male, unneutered (intact)) on Friday night. So far it’s been a bit stressful, but he is such a sweet cat. So I am looking for a bit of advice.
He is in a separated room from our cat for now. They have met briefly (20-30 seconds at a time) and there was no hissing or anything which is good but I don’t want to push it so we’ve kept interactions very limited. Foster seems a bit anxious in a separated room though and we cannot be in there with him 24/7, he yowls pretty loud when he’s in there alone. I have been sleeping in there with him at night but he hasn’t been sleeping much that I can tell- he wakes me up quite often and so I haven’t gotten a good nights sleep since we picked him up. He kind of just walks laps around the room and yowls a bit. And he’ll come up the bed and get pet and put for a minute or two but will continue to get up.
Our resident cat is clearly excited to have a new friend but I can tell he’s a bit anxious. He will sit outside the door and scratch at the door and they’ll both meow at each other through the closed door. And my resident cat has diarrhea which he has never had before so I think that’s a sign of stress.
I’m just looking for advice or maybe words of encouragement because I am very tired and it hasn’t even been 48 hours! We really want to keep fostering him and potentially adopt him but another factor contributing to this stress is that he’s recovering from a pretty deep bite wound. I didn’t get too much information on healing timeline but if I had to guess it would take several weeks to fully heal- or more. So even once we finally fully introduce the cats I wouldn’t want them together if we can’t watch them as I’d be worried my resident cat might sniff or accidentally bump the wound. Also to add to the mix he peed on his foot his morning so we had to try and clean his foot off which wasn’t easy. ALSO he’s not neutered yet and they want to wait until he’s healed to put him under to do that, which makes sense, but that has also led to some uncomfortable humping/ mounting of pillows and blankets that I’ve never dealt with before. I am also worried this might make him aggressive toward our resident neutered male cat but it seems to be okay so far.
Do you think if we leave the foster alone for a few hours in his room with some food and a comfy set up, he’ll eventually calm down and maybe get some sleep? He’s got a pretty sweet suite with a heating pad and lots of toys and water and food (and a litter box of course). There are two windows in the room he can watch out of as well.
Any other advice you have is very welcome. Thank you so much!