Happy Pets

An Open Window: An Opportunity to Escape?

Within a few hours of his arrival in his new home, Caspar the kitten went missing. Certain that he couldn’t have ventured outside, but baffled as to what sort of hiding place he could have found in a modestly sized flat, we searched high and low, to no avail. Something eventually led us into the kitchen, and then to the upright fridge-freezer. There was a small gap between the back of the appliance and the wall … he couldn’t have, could he? Sure enough, on pulling out the unit, we discovered our new kitten curled up in a space within the backless freezer, its electrical innards all the while buzzing away ominously. This cautionary tale goes to show that you should take the same stringent precautions to make your home safe for a new kitten or cat that you would for a toddler — even more so, since toddlers lack the advanced escapology skills of a cat. (more…)

If you are bringing home a kitten, it is important that you provide it with some toys to play with: play is a vital part of a kitten’s development, whereby it practises its chasing and pouncing skills. Playing with your kitten will also strengthen the bond between you, as well as being great fun for all of the game’s participants, be they human or feline. The imaginations of older cats, too, are often stimulated by a toy mouse to ‘hunt’, particularly if they are indoor cats who neither have access to the real thing nor much opportunity to exercise. Although, for example, our pair of twelve-year-olds have reached the age when they no longer always spring into action when a thing-on-a-string is dangled in front of their noses, toy mice materialise overnight in spots where once there were none, evidence that our felines are not too old to indulge in nocturnal games of cat and mouse. (more…)

Unless you welcome the idea of sharing your bed with your cat and suffering the consequences in terms of sleep-deprivation (a cat will rarely stay co-operatively prone at the bottom of the bed all night), start as you mean to go on and prepare a bed for it. The day on which it arrives in its new home will be bewildering and tiring for your kitten or cat, and after the adrenaline rush has subsided it will welcome a comfortable bed in which to sleep to enable it to recover from the upheaval that it has experienced. (more…)

Even if your new feline is going to be an outdoor cat, you’ll still need to buy a litter tray for it to use while it settles into your household, when you should keep it house-bound until you are certain that knows where home is. Once you have given it permission to roam, your cat will regard your garden as a giant litter tray, but there will nevertheless be occasions when you’ll have to resurrect the real thing: (more…)

If you intend your feline to be an outdoor cat, think about how it is going to gain access to the great outdoors.

With your special skill as a door-opener, are you prepared to be miaowed at every time, day or night that your cat wants to be let in or out? If not, and you don’t want to restrict your cat’s movements, fitting a cat flap into a wall or door (for which some DIY expertise will be required) is probably the answer. (more…)

The first thing to note is that a cat’s nutritional requirements will change throughout the course of its life. Their mother’s milk contains all of the nutrients that kittens need for the first month or two of their lives, after which, in the wild, they would be weaned on mice and other sources of fresh flesh. Your kitten should have been weaned before it moves in with you, but because its nose and stomach will probably have become accustomed to a particular diet, you will probably have to wean it off this gradually before switching to your preferred alternative full-time. (more…)

Before you welcome your cat or kitten into your home, you will need to prepare for its arrival by assembling the following cat-care basics.

A carrying basket

The first item that you’ll need is a carrying basket in which to transfer your cat or kitten from its existing home to yours. Don’t imagine that you will be able to carry it home in your arms: your feline is a creature of habit who will regard its previous place of residence as a safe haven, so as soon as you — after all, (more…)

When meeting a prospective feline member of your family for the first time, be it a kitten or a cat, a crossped or a purebred, the essential question to ask yourself is whether it looks healthy. If you have any doubts, it would be wiser not to adopt it: not only could you be condemning yourself to exorbitant veterinary bills and a new career as a feline nurse, but you could even have to suffer the premature death of your feline charge. (more…)

• Does the kitten look generally healthy and alert? If so, it has probably not contracted any life- endangering viruses or illnesses from its mother or environment.
• Any juvenile wobbliness aside, do the kitten’s legs appear to be functioning normally? If it seems lame, it may be suffering from a non-reversible birth defect, have a broken limb or be showing the first signs of a serious illness. (more…)

Unless you have already reserved a kitten from the litter of a mother cat whose owner you know, your first port of call when looking for a cat to adopt should be your local vet’s. Most veterinary surgeries display notice boards on which people whose cats have produced kittens, or those who sadly can no longer keep their older cats, can ‘advertise’ felines in need of a good home. (more…)