Android custom view not drawn when used in another activity

So, I made a small android app which draws several images on a class which extends a view and it all works perfectly when I set it as the contentView in the main activity code but I want it to be put in the layout of the main activity via xml so I can show a few more views, but when I do it, the whole layout is blank(and I set the main activity as contentView). Is there any protocol...code or something I should follow to accomplish this? My XML code :

<nu.bluebit.CatView 
    android:id="@+id/gview"
      android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"/>