The introduction of another animal to a household can often be difficult, stressful, and take a very long time.

It seemed we had a fairly good scenario for the introduction of the cats. Indi had only recently (one month ago) come from a 20 cat household (a foster home) and was good with other cats. She is also a girl and much younger than Oscar. Oscar was leaving his territory of five years for new ground (so there was little chance of him being territorial), and is a desexed male. There was very little "omg you are replacing me with an almost identical cat!" likely to happen.

Last night, Oscar touched down in Sydney. According to my parents, he meowed once as they left the house, and then did not meow again and took everything in his stride. When we collected him at the other end, he did not appear distressed or concerned at the trip, flight, strange location he was in, or anything at all.

We got him home, and let him out enclosed in one room with an ensuite (with all the necessary kitty items).

After five minutes, he proclaimed himself ready to explore the rest of the house. So, we scooped Indi up and relocated her to our bedroom. Oscar looked around, he seemed ok and even let me cuddle him a bit.

Then he continued to look around and meow a little.

Eventually, he discovered the closed door to our bedroom and could smell Indi. There were immediate hisses from both sides of the door.

After fifteen more minutes of Oscar wandering the house, we put him back in his carrier and released Indigo. She, not one to beat around the bush apparently, went straight up to the carrier and sniffed noses with Oscar. Then there was hissing on both sides, and on of those strangled-sounding foghorn "I am angry, and don't you forget it" growl/meows from Oscar inside the carrier. Indigo stepped back thirty centimetres and puffed up - her tail was three times its normal size (which meant it was Oscar's normal tail size).

Ten minutes later, we let Oscar out, and everyone was prepared to grab the nearest blanket and drop it on the cats if fighting broke out. However no fighting has broken out, and although there is hissing if either of them encroaches on the personal space boundaries (currently approximately 1.5 metres, although Indi seems prepared to have a much smaller personal space than Oscar) there has been no fighting. Indi has taken to following Oscar around the house and creeping closer inch by inch to see how close she can get. It's sort of like kids where one is trying to wear down the other. Or like she knows he's scared of her*. I had no idea she was so sneaky or so stubborn.

*Allowing for everything being new, and Oscar being on the back foot, he does seem to be somewhat of a coward.

After an hour or so though, Oscar also took to hissing and spinning into the defensive angry cat back-on-ground-teeth-bared-claws-out position whenever someone went to pat him or even go past him. This morning he was still hissy. but let me pat him a few times without complaint and also rubbed against my knee a few times. There is hope, I think.

Anyway, things seem to be going ok. I just hope that he does snap out of the hissy/spitty at people thing. The fortunate part is that he hasn't swiped at anyone yet. Which is actually, for him, amazing. I mean, he was very mellow by this year compared to his first two years, but given the slightly swipey tendency and the shock of the change to environments, etc, it is in fact amazing.

Also, my cat, next to another normal sized cat? I feel like I've been hit with a sledge hammer. I had no idea my cat was the feline version of the Incredible Hulk. I had no idea. I mean, I knew he was bigger and knew that it was largely bone, muscle, and a fair amount of fur .... but wow. He is ginormous. He looks like an overweight corgi is how big he is. And for a cat? That's huge. And there's only a tiny bit of plumpness to him - the rest is muscle, bone size and fur. Luke is fairly sure he doesn't remember him being this ginormous back in March, but maybe we didn't have a realistic marker to compare him to? I mean, Indi is smaller, she's only 6 months old, but she's not a midget for her age or anything.

People have said to me before that Oscar was big. A big cat. And I didn't disagree. But ... the realisation is sinking home as to how big they were trying to make me understand he was.

My cat is a monster.

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What odds an escaped lion from the zoo was actually his dad? o.0