will my cat accept my kitten?

[emi-elektrik]

I have a 14 year old cat we've had since a kitten. She has always had a dominating personality and has always been playfully cruel (eg clawing us as we walk by). Nevertheless she accepted our previous cat, an older male, very easily and despite bullying him into sharing his food, the two got on well. They didn't spend much time around one another though, always having their own space.
We got an older female, milly, after George's death and the two were both dominant and fought until milly ran away.
We have now recently had to adopt a kitten to save it from living with students. The kitten is female and roughly 11 weeks. Our 14 year cat (Izzie) hisses and growls and is becoming increasingly violent towards the kitten, striking her with her claws out and.backing away in rage. After a bought she will not let me touch her until I give her a treat.
I try giving them both separate attention and the kitten sleeps in the conservatory at night so she doesn't cross Izzie path at night.
I really want them to get on as the kittens moved house 5 times already in 3 weeks trying to find someone who'll take her from a student's flat but I don't want my Izzie to live her final years unhappy and stressed.
Does anyone know if it's.likely she will.accept a kitten? Or have we bitten off more than we can chew?

[wolf63]

As you know cats are vicious, evil little monsters - you have your work cut out.

This site usually gives good information http://www.fabcats.org/behaviour/index.php and hopefully you will get some ideas of how to make your home less like a war zone.

I have two siblings - I thought that they would be best friends and curl up together. They alternate between hating each other to ignoring each other - no matter what we, mere humans, do we always fail to please our masters.

Failing all the usual stuff you could try getting Izzie hooked on catnip, maybe she will turn into a mellow kittie. On the other hand she could turn into a psychotic killer. Cats!!

[Duncer]

Gosh, this is difficult. We adopted a brother and sister from a liotter of two males and two females, turning down the two brothers as we thought males would fight. We have good days and we have days when I could throttle Max for bullying his sister, but she is a happy well-adjusted cat in general.

[wolf63]

Frankie (in avatar) is pretty easy going but his sister Princess Merlin is the loose cannon in our house. The vet diagnosed her as being 'a sandwich short of a picnic', nice scientific phrase. She is unpredictable and stupid and she bites.

[Duncer]

Don't all women?

[wolf63]

Brave man!

I will send Princess Slasher from the Fair City to sort you out.

emi - I hope that the fights sound worse than they are. It would be nice if they got along and became friends.

[JustJenni]

When we brought a kitten into our house we already had an 8 year old cat(boo) she hated her and i mean hated her she would chase her and bite her, hiss at her and tried to scratch her all the time and she finally left her alone and now they get on perfectly fine together, they play fight and theres the odd hiss every now and again but weve had that with all of our cats. Hopw it all works out for you

[CatGirl4]

There's no guarantee that they will get on,cats aren't pack animals as dogs are.You could try putting them in different rooms,then transferring them,they can get used to each other's smell this way,a plug in called Feliway can help to calm such situations.

[emi-elektrik]

Thanks :) luna has now started to try and play with izzie, who is responding by batting her in the face. Despite this, luna just rolls around in front of izzie teasing her and seems unfazed by the attacks. So I think this is a good sign? They can happily lay in the same room with only a few growls so perhaps izzie was just showing her who is boss with the growling and hissing. Hopefully they will get on in time! Ill have a look at getting one of those plug ins to calm them.