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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