Kitten Care
What
to Bring
~ Cat Carrier with small blanket or towel
~ Final Payment Balance - cash (unless previously paid by cheque or email money transfer)
~ TICA registraion paper - Blue Slip (Although sometimes this is sent later if I don't get it in time)
~ Health records (vaccinations
& spay/neuter papers)
~ Your kitten !!
Bringing your new
kitten home
As part of our contract if you have other pets you are required
to separate your new kitten until it has been health checked by
your veterinarion. We highly encourage that regardless if you have
other pets, that you start your new kitten in one room. This room
should be complete with food, water, litter, bed, toys and cat-tree
(if possible). This allows your kitten a chance to easily find its
amenities (avoid accidents!) and feel comfortable faster. It means
you can go to bed, to work or other outings without worrying that
your kitten will become lost in its new home and not know where
their bathroom is!
You can then slowly introduce your new kitten to the
rest of the home. Allow the kitten to walk from its room to other
locations so it can mentally 'map' out your house.
Encourage and gain trust with your new kitten with canned food,
toys and lots of pets and kind words. If your kitten is hiding or
shy don't be discouraged. It can take 2-4 weeks before a kitten
is completely comfortable with its new home and its new family.
Don't leave your kitten to hide the entire time, a mistake would
be to let the kitten 'come out on it's own'. Take time several times
a day to find the hiding kitten and scoop them up and pet them,
talk to, feed and play with them. They will quickly learn that you
are fun to play with and will forget to be shy!
That said kittens are still babies so they do need some alone time
to sleep and recharge their batteries just like us.
New kittens will often cry for the ride home and during the first
week. They are calling to see if anyone they know is around for
company. They will settle in and the crying with turn to conversation to their new family :)
Cats are considered obligate carnivores and therefore should be eating an exclusively meat/organ/bone diet with only a VERY small amount of added fiber. In the wild they would get this partially digested fiber from the stomachs of the mice they eat. Here is some great information on what it means to be an Obligate Carnivore.
We feed a mixture of canned and raw two to three times per day. We give them several flavours of Fancy Feast canned food which can be purchased at pretty much any grocery or pet store. We mix the canned with a half and half mixture of Legacy brand Chicken Dinner and Meaty Necks and Backs. We purchase the pre-packaged frozen raw food from Tail Blazers, where I have found to have the best price.
We highly recommend continuing to feed them some type of canned/raw food as their main food source as this is best for your cat/kittens health. By the time you take your kitten home they will be good with having two wet food feedings per day.
I have also recently discovered that the cats LOVE freeze dried raw food. It is slightly more expensive, but quite convenient.
If you'd like to feed something other than what they are currently eating, we recommend
slowly introducing the new food by mixing it in with the current food
over a few weeks.
We use non-clumping Pine Pellets, we purchase it at G&E Pharmacy as it is cheapest there, but most pet stores will carry it as well.
We recommend you start with this type of litter to ensure your kitten
understands where his new bathroom is and then slowly mix in new
litter over a few weeks if you want to use a different type. We do not recomment using clay litter (the most commonly found litter) as it is toxic to the cats if they should injest it.
We use litter boxes without lids. To start your litter
box should NOT have a lid, this makes the litter box easy to find
and less scary to use. Make sure there is a litter box on each level of your house that the kitten has access to. This will help to minimize accidents.
Cat
Trees
We highly recommend having a cat tree that's at least 3 feet
tall with at least one level useable for a place for the cat to
sleep. They
will scratch and play and sleep on them. They recognize them as
their own 'special place'. Check out The Cat Factory for some great sturdy cat trees.
They should be located in a place that the family occupies frequently, in a lower traffic area (ie. a corner of a room vs right beside a busy hallway) and having it located near a window where they can bask in the sun is always a bonus!
Kittens 
