Introducing a new cat or kitten to your home when you already have an existing cat can be tricky, and the existing cat struggling to adjust and becoming upset with the new cat is a really common problem.
It’s what happened to us when we added a kitten, Cucumber, to our home with existing adult cat, Loki. After a lot of trial and error we ended up finding success by medicating Loki with Fluoxetine, on advice of our vet, so I want to share the behaviours we saw that made us try medication and the results that we saw.
Firstly, Meet Loki
This is Loki, our adult cat who is super calm in general and loves dogs and other cats. At the time we got Cucumber, Loki was 5 years old and although we have a pet dog and he loves meeting family dogs- and our boarding dogs- we have never had a second cat.
Over Christmas (2022), we looked after my grandparent’s female cat, Ozzy and Loki absolutely loved it. We put Ozzy in our spare room for the first couple of days so she could settle in and Loki spent that time waiting outside the door. When Ozzy was happy enough to leave her room, Loki spent the remainder of her time with us trying to get her to play with him, sleeping near her and generally just being around her.
Because of this, we decided that Loki would benefit from a second cat and we got a kitten for him six months later (June 2023). Enter: Cucumber
Enter: Cucumber, and Loki’s Behaviour Change
Cucumber was raised in a big litter and loved cats so he immediately tried to spend all of his time with Loki and, apart from being annoyed when Cucumber tried to bat his tail, Loki mostly liked it. They played together at least once a day, sometimes Loki was even the one initiating the play, and they slept cuddled together a lot.
Slowly though, we started to notice Loki having what can only be described as panic attacks. Loki would be resting somewhere in the room, Cucumber would calmly just enter the room and Loki would start growling and then hiss and then run to the corner of the room and hiss to himself a little bit and would take a few minutes to calm himself down. Nothing we did calmed him down at all.
Other triggers included:
Loki started to growl and eventually hiss when we picked him up, and I can’t stress to you how much we handled him previously and how happy he was with that. We’d spent the past five years picking him up multiple times a day.
He would hiss if we shepherded him up the stairs at bedtime and at the worst of it, he actually seemed to try to hide in the kitchen at bedtime instead of coming up to the bedroom.
He stopped coming to me for cuddles and stopped sleeping next to me, which was way out of character for him, he used to spend most of his day asleep on me, purring. He actually started to spend almost all of his time on the downstairs armchair, a place Cucumber wouldn’t follow because Cucumber was (irrationally) scared of our dog. (Blog to follow on that)
The weirdest thing about all of Loki’s behaviour was that he never actually hissed at Cucumber directly and he continued to play with him every day, it was like Cucumber’s presence was upsetting Loki subconsciously.
We thought maybe Cucumber getting neutered could help so we did that as early as was safe (about five months in) but it made no difference so a few weeks later we got a blood test, to rule out anything medical, and started considering Fluoxetine.
There’s a small little detour over the next two months (Dec 2023) where we got a Feliway plug-in and noticed a difference but it didn’t seem to make enough of a difference so we finally booked an appointment to get Loki on Fluoxetine.
About Fluoxetine
Fluoxetine is a medication for anxiety and panic in cats and dogs and is the medication most recommended by vets and animal professionals because of the sheer number of studies it has. Overwhelmingly it has the most clinical evidence of success and as I know, it’s the only SSRI that has been licensed for use in pets in the UK currently.
I’ve had clients use it for things like separation anxiety and generalised anxiety in their dogs and it’s especially good for dogs that are genetically anxious. In humans it can take about 30 days to get into your system so vets do state the same for pets, but I actually noticed a difference in Loki from 2 weeks. There’s also no evidence to suggest cats and dogs feel SSRI withdrawal in the same way humans do, if is stopped, which is a great bonus.
Fluoxetine is a weight-based medication so the amount is determined by your pet’s bodyweight and is worked out on a mg/kg chart. Loki started on a medium dose; the therapeutic levels that it works at are 0.5mg - 1.5mg per kg and Loki started on just less than 1mg/kg.
Loki’s first month on Fluoxetine
Within two weeks we started to see changes and by week four we were officially obsessed. Loki had basically entirely stopped growling and hissing if Cucumber entered a room. We were giving Loki the medicine orally, squirting it into his mouth with a syringe, which he absolutely hated but we had to accept that the tiny bit of stress giving the medicine caused was well worth it when it reduced all the other stress.
The only problem we did see is that Loki started to space out and did what we call “getting stuck”. He would follow me into the kitchen (normal) and crouch on the doormat (normal) but two hours later I’d come back down and he’d still just be crouching in the same spot. He’d climb in his litter tray and prepare to use it and then just stand there. He’d go under the bed (somewhat normal but usually from stress) and after five hours I’d pull him out and then he would purr and sleep next to me, so he wasn’t stress hiding, it was like he’d just forgotten to climb back out.
Because of this, we slowly reduced his dosage. We wanted to see how low we could reduce it whilst still keeping the benefits. He stopped “getting stuck” almost as soon as we lowered it but as the panic attacks didn’t return we lowered it more and eventually lowered him off it completely, still without panic attacks returning.
On a lower dose, Loki was happier but now that he is off it completely, his real personality has come back out completely. He’s engaging us in play again, he’s demanding cuddles and he’s grumbling at Cucumber when Cucumber annoys him- which is a good thing. He does one little grumble and then stops, it doesn’t progress into a panic attack.
We’re still keeping an eye on him and we will put him back on if needed but for now we’re really happy with where he’s at. I don’t think we’ll ever know why Cucumber specifically caused a problem and I definitely wonder if it would’ve happened if we’d got a female kitten but we’re just glad he’s back to normal. I still think getting Cucumber was a good idea and I don’t regret it, Loki really does love playing with him. The only thing I really regret is not starting the Fluoxetine sooner.
Now we’re starting Cucumber on Fluoxetine because he’s incredibly anxious and his reactions to small stimuli are way overblown so I’ll post an updated blog in a month or so with our results from that.
Comments