Welcome to the Tonk board!

We're generally a fairly talkative group, although it's been pretty quiet here for a while.

Tonks are incredibly affectionate little creatures. You simply cannot give them enough attention. They are definitely not cats that want to be left alone! They're also very active and playful. A Tonk would make a wonderful companion for Cookie, too.

I'd say that a kitten would probably be the best route to take. Cookie is going to put up a fuss regardless, but she'll calm down once she realizes that the newcomer is there to stay. The key is to make the introduction slowly, keeping the new kitty confined to one room with his/her own food and water and litter box at first and making supervised introductions--and to give Cookie plenty of reassurance that she's still top cat.

As for male vs. female, all I can go on is my own experience. Both Emily and Eddie are neutered. Eddie is 6 months younger than Emily and about a pound lighter, but he is definitely the boss. And Emily is very easily intimidated by him. In fact, he can get so bossy at times (like the time he decided that he didn't want Emily in the bedroom at night and she started spending the nights in the guest room) that I have to put my foot down. (Don't get me wrong--they get along beautifully 99% of the time, but every once in a while Eddie feels the need to try and throw his weight around!)

Good luck, and keep us posted!


Carol, Emily, & Eddie
















>>Hello to all the Tonk lovers!
>>
>>Cookie is our American Shorthair that my wife found starving on the side of a rural road when she was about 6-8 weeks old last summer. She is now healthy, spayed, and doing just fine. My wife, my two teenage boys and I absolutely love her.
>>
>>The first few months with her were hilarious; she was the "typical kitten": chasing and hunting everything, getting into everything, sleeping under our covers, purring a lot, etc. Now she's more-or-less fully grown at 8.5 pounds and has become a more "typical cat"; meaning she can be pretty aloof. Maybe once a day, if it suits her, she'll come around and meow or allow us to pet her, but mostly she prefers to be on her own. We would have liked a cat that preferred more attention and returned affection, but she's ours now and we wouldn't give her up for anything.
>>
>>We're considering getting another cat, partly to give our young Cookie somebody to play with, but mostly because we are now fully-fledged cat lovers and we want another one. From all the research we've done we know adding another cat is like rolling the dice; you never know exactly how they'll react. We're thinking that adding a kitten would be less threatening to Cookie than adding an adult cat.
>>
>>Reading up on the various breeds, a Tonkinese seems the most appealing to us and what we enjoy about cats. Any thoughts and especially experience out there in adding a Tonkinese kitten to a household where an American Shorthair already resides and has become aloof? Would you add a cat/kitten at all, given what I have described? If so, would you add a male or female? I've read that a neutered male Tonkinese is less likely to be consumed with becoming the Alpha Cat, but a female Tonkinese (spayed or not) will always try to become the top cat. Any truth to that?
>>
>>Any and all advice/comments/recommendations are welcome!

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