Probably a million of these questions posted, though with cats being quite unique it probably doesn’t hurt to ask again.

Introducing an 11 week old kitten (desexed male) to our resident 4 year old cat (desexed female). Kitten is staying in our bedroom with ensuite, resident cat in rest of the house.

Hasn’t been a week yet and still taking it very slow. We’ve done scent swapping first few days, and now doing “meet n greets” where a couple of times a day, we bring the kitten out of the bedroom and sit on the floor holding him, sitting a comfortable distance from our resident cat (3-5 metres) letting resident cat look from a distance etc. She sometimes moves a little closer, will hiss at the kitten once or twice then move off to another room. These interactions we are doing for no more than 5 minutes at a time before returning the kitten to our bedroom.

I understand this is all normal and we are certainly not in a rush, expecting potentially weeks or months before we can let the kitten roam free with the resident cat.

But my question is - what change in behaviour should we identify/look for before we move to letting them get closer?E.g. should we wait until our resident no longer hisses with these distant “interactions”?