Pair of House Cats Jump the Barrier Keeping Them From Loving on New Foster Kittens

Everyone knows the phrase “curious as a cat” and when it comes to this pair of house cats, its clear their innate curiosity has gotten the better of them — it’s even defeated the barriers that their humans put up to keep them away from a room full of foster kittens. And the results are truly touching.

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Most of the literature about introducing new kittens to the established feline in the house is all about how to reduce the chances of a cat fight and help these territorial creatures get along. There’s not much out there about the opposite problem—where your cats are so eager to make friends with the new arrival they stage an Ocean’s Eleven-style infiltration. But that’s exactly what the cats in this video are doing.

Related: 'Old Lady Cat' Carrying Her Adopted Rescue Kitten Up the Cat Tower is Warming Hearts

Here they are, stretching to their fullest possible heights to get a glimpse of the “babies” — one is even just pretending to do an “innocent stretch” rather than testing the height of the barrier for leaping purposes.

And when their mom takes down the gate and allows the kittens access to the full-grown cats? Well, then it’s just love at first site.

Isolating New Rescue Cats

There are many good reasons to keep foster and rescued kittens isolated from other pets in the house—at least until they’ve gotten a decent bill of health from the vet. Even when I adopted my cats, who had been living with the foster for two months, they were sick with intestinal bacteria that had not been caught and treated in their initial treatments at the rescue. If the new cats had been sharing food or a litter box with other pets, they could spread that disease around.

Additionally, kittens, like the ones in this video, are often too young for their full course of vaccines, so keeping your new rescues isolated for a few weeks may be the right course of action—no matter how curious your cats are to make friends.

How to Introduce a Cat to New Kittens

Cats are highly territorial in nature, and to them, the arrival of a new feline could be seen as an encroachment on their territory. Therefore, there are steps to take if you want to guarantee a harmonious living arrangement between your beloved pet and any new members of the family. It’s best to introduce them slowly, and give them separate rooms from which to sniff at each other for a day or two (as well as separate spaces to retreat to while they are still figuring things out). This is definitely the time to bribe your cats with treats so they see the new animal as a time of joyous celebration. For the first few weeks your cats are in the same place, it pays to supervise their interactions and to make sure they have a place to retreat to for some “alone time” if they need a break from each other.

But there’s no reason to think that they won’t eventually make friends. Despite being territorial, cats are also social—they love to play tag and wrestle, as well as engage in “allogrooming,” a bonding ritual in which cats who are part of the same group bathe each other.

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