How to Introduce Your New Lapdolls Kitten to a Resident Cat

From Lapdolls Ragdoll Cattery

Bringing home a new kitten is exciting, but proper introduction to your resident cat is key to a smooth and peaceful transition. Here’s a step-by-step guide we recommend for all our families:

 1. Prepare a Separate Safe Room

Set up a quiet room just for your new kitten:

• Litter box

• Food & water bowls

• Toys and bed

• Scratching post

Let your kitten adjust for the first 2–3 days. This is important for:

• Stress recovery after travel

• Gradual scent exchange

• Health observation

  
  

 2. Scent Introduction (First 2–4 Days)

Before they meet face-to-face, help them get used to each other’s smell:

• Rub both cats with the same soft towel or blanket

• Swap their bedding

• Allow your resident cat to sniff under the kitten’s door

This builds curiosity and familiarity without threat.

 3. Visual Introduction

After 3–5 days of calm behavior:

• Use a cracked door, baby gate, or carrier to allow a short visual interaction

• Watch body language (calm tail, relaxed ears = good signs)

• Keep sessions short and positive

Give treats and praise to both cats to build positive association.

 4. Supervised Face-to-Face Meetings

Once they seem curious and calm:

• Allow short, supervised visits in a neutral area

• Keep first sessions under 10 minutes

• Don’t force interaction — let them set the pace

• If one cat hisses, growls, or swats, calmly separate and try again later

Repeat 1–2 times daily, gradually increasing time together.

 5. Monitor and Adjust

Most Ragdolls adjust well within 1–2 weeks, but every cat is unique. Look for:

• Gentle play or mutual grooming = bonding!

• Occasional hissing = normal at first

• Prolonged aggression or fear = slow down the process

Always give both cats equal attention to avoid jealousy.

 Final Tips from Lapdolls:

• Don’t rush — slow and calm introductions lead to lifelong friendships

• Use pheromone diffusers (like Feliway) to reduce stress

• Provide multiple litter boxes and feeding stations at first

  

  
  

Your kitten and raw

Written by Louise Balmforth

1) Kittens are ALWAYS old enough for raw, from their very first taste of solid food through to their last meal on earth raw meat, bones and organs is the best thing they can eat.

(2) There is more risks from feeding commercial cat food than from feeding raw, from bacterial and chemical contamination to nutrient deficiencies that cause blindness and death hundreds of thousands of pets have died because of defective pet food products. FACT

(3) While there is some truth in the idea that kittens should not be switched immediately they are re-homed due to stress etc, for many kittens you do not have to switch them, you simply offer both and they choose raw, the younger they are the more likely they have not been programmed into eating inappropriate food.

Also, you are talking about switching him to another food anyway, and switching between commercial cat foods is way more stressful, mentally and physiologically, than switching to raw.. All commercial foods are a chemical cocktail of artificial nutrients absolutely needed because most of the natural nutrients are destroyed during the processing, it takes cats a good while to adjust to these chemical changes where raw is extremely easy to digest and absorb so rarely any problem switching immediately

(4) While your concerns regarding raw feeding are understandable and most of the 52000+ members here felt the same way at one point or another, they are unfounded. If you feed a mixture of bone, meat and organs it is actually quite difficult to get it wrong, probably harder to get wrong than get right.

(5) You are right about kibble not helping keep teeth clean, it does not particularly cause teeth problems nor does it clean them. Lower quality wet food however is very bad for teeth, it often has sugar added (cheap fillers) and as the sloppy wet goo sticks to anything it touches including teeth is extremely bad for them.

(6) Food is more than a fuel, feeding an animal its natural diet or as close to it as you can reasonably get ALWAYS results in a happier, contented and less stressed animal. Stress in a cat is always bad, in a kitten it is much more risky. A stressed kittens immune system is affected and they are less able to fight infections, the risk of FIP is much greater in a stressed kitten for this reason along with a number of other illnesses.

(7) Unless you are one of the extremely lucky ones, and as we continue to fight to awake the world to the realities of the disgusting pet food industry and the common sense approach to feeding (feed what they have evolved to eat) the odds are improving very slowly, your vet is going to feed you nothing but a string of outright lies taught to him by the likes of Hills or Royal Canin which are designed to ensure these companies get a hold of you and your wallet for the life of the pet.

A vets nutrition training in vet school consists of one day, sometimes less, of 'training' provided by an employee of hills or royal canin and paid for by said company. This 'training' is nothing more than a sales seminar where vets are 'taught' that raw meat has too high a protein content which leads to renal failure (raw has a much lower protein content than pretty much ALL commercial pet foods as it is 80% water), that eating bones will cause an intestinal impaction or perforation leading to death (cats have been eating raw bones for 30+ million years and have not seemed to suffer from it!) and that home made raw food will lead to nutrient deficiencies and ill health because of a lack of vitamins and minerals (the simple truth is that commercial cat foods cause these issues because the vitamins and minerals are destroyed by the processing and due to financial reasons or mechanical failure of the plant they often get left out of the finished product where a raw diet contains all these needed nutrients within the fresh meat and organs we feed therefore needs NO supplementation at all.

(8) It is admirable that you want to research, there are a few morons who simply throw a chicken wing at their cat twice a day and call them fed and these people can and do end up causing their cats health problems or even worse, they also give the rest of us a bad name because its human nature to dwell on the negative.

However, raw feeding properly is not in the slightest complicated or difficult, it is just a case of getting three ingredients roughly into proportion - and despite what many might say it does not have to be that accurate either. anywhere between 10 and 20 percent bone (or a substitute like powdered eggshell, or bone meal) anywhere between 60 and 80% muscle meat and anywhere between 10 and 20% organ and you are in the ball park and not going to cause any issues..

Most people aim for 80:10:10, personally I aim for 75:15:10 but I don't get all anal about it, near enough is near enough.

As an added level of protection most of us DO supplement minerals and vitamins, even the ones who claim they dont... But we use a natural multivitamin called free range eggs which contain another protein source, a great food source, and a boost to all the vitamins and minerals a cat needs in one tidy little shell. Toss in a bit of fish oil or tinned oily fish and you are feeding a species appropriate extremely high quality, extremely digestible food with almost no waste at all (so tiny poops once every 2 to 4 days instead of great big stinking logs every day that can strip the paint off your doors)

So, the sooner you come to terms with it and start feeding your kitten the food his 30 million year evolution has moulded him to eat the sooner you will see the true beast before you, until you witness a raw fed kitty you have not seen a healthy kitty no matter how hard that is to believe.

Editing file to add this as it is frequently asked. How much should I feed my kitten - as much as they want. Kittens should be fed as much as they want for at least the first year of life, a few breeds like Bengals, Savannah, Maine Coon, Ragdoll, NFC take longer to mature so they should still be allowed to eat as much as they like until well into their second year, several small meals a day suit kittens best as their stomachs can only hold so much, obviously this changes as they grow and as they approach 6 months they can be fed larger amounts 2-3 times a day.

 Your kitten and raw

Ragdoll Breed Presentation - Dobrinya