Animal Welfare Professionals

Introducing foster kittens to resident cats. Has anyone had positive or negative experiences with this?

Prepare to be entertained.  Both you and the resident adult cats.

I personally don't combine foster cats with my resident cat because he is very cat-aggressive, but I will introduce my (very calm, cat-loving, with an instant "leave it" or "come here" response) dog to them for short periods. We start with a baby gate between them and that usually goes well, though we've had one cat try to charge him through the gate!

My organization enforces a minimum 2 week quarantine period before introducing fosters to the family pets, just in case. An incident a couple years ago that resulted in 12 cats (half of them semi-feral barn cats) with ringworm taught us that lesson the hard way :(

However, I also just talked with a foster last week whose kittens we discovered had (a couple) fleas at their spay/neuter appointment. She's had the kittens since they were a few days old, never seen any signs of fleas, and I've been over several times and never seen anything either. Since she keeps her foster kittens 100% separate in their own room, clean up/treatment has been relatively easy.

For the most part we keep our fosters separate from our two resident cats. We have two dedicated foster rooms and if I take home more they end up in our bedroom in a playpen. Since our cats have access to the bedroom, there is some exposure. As the kittens get older and after the 14 day quarantine they come out to play. At this point out our cats will check them out, and will usually hiss. We never allow them in the room unsupervised. Our male cat loves the babies and will clean and play with them but also get a little grumpy if he's not in the mood. Our female doesn't like the kittens and hisses at them and has swatted one that didn't back off when hissed at. It's a warning and doesn't hurt them. Neither has ever been agressive with the kittens or attempted to hurt them but I would still never allow unsupervised interaction. Ive never had an issue when I worried for the kittens safety but I'd say interaction is more nuetral than positive or negative because I think both cats would prefer not to have foster kittens in the house because it upsets their routine.