“Congratulations on the upcoming arrival of your fur baby!” But don’t get too excited just yet — I’ve seen too many newbies arrive home stressed to the point of refusing to eat because they were ill-prepared. Do three things: close the windows tightly, clean up any poisons, and prepare the cat food.
- Close windows: Don’t believe in the “low floor” myth, cats can easily jump up to 2 meters high. Invisible nets with magnets are cheaper and more attractive than traditional window seals.
- Clean up poisons: lilies, greens, water guanyin and other “plant killers” must be cleaned up, as one bite can kill a cat.
- Prepare cat food: Use the original cat food for at least a week! Then gradually replace it with new cat food, don’t replace it all at once, don’t be like me when I tried to save time and directly replaced it with new food, the result is that the kitten has soft stools to the point of collapse. (Don’t ask why I know, that’s the pit I stepped in!) Day 1-3: Observe the kitten’s state more ofte
Core principle: treat the kitten as a newborn baby! - Environment Setup
- Safe House: Build a “bomb shelter” with a roofed litter box + cardboard box, and line it with old sweaters (to leave some of your scent). Don’t buy that kind of transparent space capsule, cats don’t feel safe.
- Three-piece set: food bowl, water bowl and litter box are more than 1 meter apart, and kittens are recommended to use an open and short litter box (easy for kittens to enter and exit). Observation focus
- Status: If the kitten is active, there should be no problem, if it hides and does not eat much super immediately seek medical attention.
- Excretion: 24 hours without defecation should be vigilant, use a warm towel on the stomach and massage clockwise.
- Hiding: it is normal to hide in a cardboard box for more than 8 hours, but more than 24 hours need to be guided manually.
Experience sharing: My first cat hid for three days when it first arrived, and I took a teaser stick and shook it in the hole every day, but it backfired. Then I got smart and shoved the stick in the hole for it to find itself — and on the third day it finally poked its little head out.
Days 4-7: Critical period for building trust
When the cat first arrives at the new home, it will be fearful and insecure. Wait until it slowly familiarizes itself with the home and you, and remember to be hasty! Patience + Time
Interaction rules
- Feeding training: open the can next to the food bowl and call to lure to eat.
- Night management: parkour at 3am? Use a laser pointer to guide the chase during the day to burn off energy .
- Scent Marking: Lay out the corner of the couch you always sit on with cat litter and sprinkle some catnip to entice it to take over the territory
Diet management
The 7-day diet change method must be strictly enforced (don’t do what Netflix calls “quick diet change”):
- Day4: 75% old food + 25% new food
- Day6: 50% old food + 50% new food
- Day7: Complete transition
I’ll tell you a piece of cold knowledge: mixing some goat’s milk powder can ease the discomfort of changing food, but don’t microwave it (destroys probiotics). I used to soak it in 50℃ warm water for 5 minutes and let it cool, sprinkle some nutritional paste to increase the palatability.
Week 2-4: Golden period of health management
For your cat’s health: vaccines, deworming, and medical checkups are all essential!
List of must-do items
- Vaccine: 2 months of age, cat triple vaccine (recommended by the pet hospital), three times, with a 21-day interval between each injection;
- deworming: internal and external deworming, general deworming 1 time / month, internal deworming once every 3 months, the amount of medication according to the weight of the cat ;
- physical examination: focus on checking cat fever (test paper 10 yuan), ear mites (cotton swab sampling), cat moss and skin disease, with or without tear stains and so on;
After 30 days: private words from veteran cat owners
- Bathing: don’t wash before 6 months of age! Wiping butts with pet wipes is enough, cats clean their own fur often, and frequent bathing predisposes them to skin diseases.
- Calcium supplement: Don’t feed human calcium tablets indiscriminately, buy special liquid calcium for cats!
- Neutering: do it after 8 months of age for male cats and before estrus for female cats.
- Shiny fur: you can add multivitamins, the cat’s fur will be thicker and shinier;
- Hair loss: add deep sea fish oil to the food to reduce the cat’s hair loss, the Cat Stress First Aid Manual
Cats are naturally timid, and once they are stressed they are prone to dog panting, blowing up their hair and biting, hiding, not eating or drinking, and other stressful behaviors that are difficult to intervene to resolve, and even severe can lead to cat passing abdomen and urinary closure. It is important to prevent this in advance.
Act immediately when your cat shows these symptoms: - Mild stress (hiding + blowing up hair):
- Prepare some Stress Poppers, which contain highly concentrated cat happy factor – to help ease emotions and reduce stress and anxiety!
- Stick them anywhere your cat goes.
- Severe Stress (food refusal + diarrhea):
- Feed canned AD + dextrose water by syringe (1:1 ratio)
- Contact hospital for blood work (don’t wait! (Early symptoms of cat-borne abdomen are similar to stress)
The next article is dedicated to which states of cats are classified as emergency reactions. Secrets cats won’t tell - Treading on milk: not pampering, a sign of anxiety
- Frying and huffing: it’s not hating you, it’s fear of abandonment
- Early morning parkour: it’s not naughty, it’s the biological clock still adjusting to the earth One last word from the heart.
Owning a cat is not buying a stuffed toy, but signing a contract of life for ten to twenty years. When you get up late at night to give it medicine, when it scratches your favorite couch, when you get sky-high bills – remember that it has spent its whole life loving you and just needs a little more patience from you.
I hope this guide with body heat will make your first encounter with your furry child less bumpy and more warm. We’re all just crossing the river by touching the stones on the way to owning a cat, but please believe: love, is the best vaccine.
(P.S.) Whisper a few more newbie guidelines to avoid the pit:
- don’t buy automatic feeders (easy to jam food)
- don’t believe in the “kittens can’t drink water” myth.
- do not use 84 disinfectant (will be poisoned)
- don’t put bells on cats (irreversible hearing damage)