I know there's been a TON posted about new kittens and I have read a fair deal of it. Everything I see says introduce them slowly and don't necessarily force them upon each other.
We recently lost our younger cat (Abby-2 at the time) to a cardiac embelism that caused it to have a fatal seizure(about 3 months ago). This was extremely difficult for my wife and I as we loved both our cats. When we first brought Abby home, we attempted to slowly intorduce her to Willow (now 5)over the course of a week. There are many reasons I think this didn't work well. The first is that we had just moved into our house, and getting a new kitten in addition to the new environment I think cause MORE stress to Willow. Eventually, however, Abby and Willow learned to get along, but Willow tended to step aside whenever we would want to play with her and Abby would interrupt. Eventually one of us had to distract Abby in order for the other to play with Willow. When Abby passed away, Willow appeared to take it pretty rough after she realized what had happened. After she got over the loss, she was more cuddly with us. We enjoyed this, but always wanted another cat also.
Now we have the chance to get a kitten (or two). Today we brought home two 8 week old kittens (we call them Lex and Sydney). We debated on how this would affect Willow for a long time and we thought that by bringing both home (they are from the same litter) if one of the kittens wanted to play and Willow didn't, they would play with each other.
Anyway, I've been reading about the hints to make them get along and I have a few questions. As far as separating them and allowing them to introduce themselves at their own pace if we have a split foyer house and block off the basement so that the kittens have free run of it and not the upstairs, but let Willow go down when she wants, will this work? We have a large old picture frame blocking the kittens from going upstairs, but Willow is able to get over/around this by means the kittens cannot. We have separate food, water, and litter for the kittens and Willow. We also intend to lock the kittens in their litter/food room at night for various reasons (their safety from Willow, Willow still gets free run of the house, the kittens safety from potential hazards we haven't seen yet). Bottom line is how important is it to allow the different kittens/cats to smell each others things as opposed to just giving them the time needed to get along at their own pace. So far today Willow has been very pissy about the ordeal and until the last half hour has been hiding from us.
Additionally I must mention that we will be moving again from essentially Chicago to San Antonio in about a month, so any help that could be given to help us transport the cat(s) would also be appreciated, as we are not sure how they will take the extended car drive.
