New Kitten!

It seems so cruel to neuter cats but I know that actually it's the responsible thing to do. Same with chipping, really, it just sounds so awful. Hopefully it will be done by the adoption centre but if not of course we'll take him/her to the vet.

Yeah I'm gonna have to watch out for it wanting to pee =P

Oh I'm so happy for you I have found the hard way, it's best to not spend so much money buying fancy beds, my cat Tara sleeps in tiny cardboard boxes, on chairs, on padded envelopes. Pretty everywhere except her bed! haha

The one thing I would advise you to buy is a scratching post

We keep her in the kitchen at night with her litter box(which is like a house it has a roof and door!) and her food. During the day she has free roam.
When we first took her home, we just showed her the box and her food and let her have a run around. She was 4months. We also gave her a treat every time we saw her use the box, so she associated treats with going to the toilet in that place ;) Then we slowly stopped and she has only had 2 accidents ever!

Good luck with your new cat

I think it's mega mega important to get any pet neutered (and chipped depending on what it is like) but especially cats since most go out. It calms male animals down as well and it means female animals don't have to suffer unnecessery pain from being on heat since they don't need all that if they're not being bred with, obviously lol you can tell I wanna work with animals for a living!

I know you'll take good care of him or her though Good luck and weeee kitten! :o call it Knitty! ooh yeh, any ideas on names?

oh yes. names?

Umm I'm thinking Howl for a boy and Evie for a girl. We managed to agree on Evie after I wanted Evelyn, but I'm fine with it cause then it's like the girl in V For Vendetta =) and Howl as in Howl's Moving Castle, yay! Well it depends what it's like.

We saw the cutest kitten EVER today, it was eight months today but tiny, a tabby cat and he was running round his cage and pawing at the screen, so so cute! But he comes with a brother, and we can't persuade my dad to get two =(

awww. Too bad

*big deep breath*

Okay, my advice would be to totally cat-proof your home as much as possible. It's very easy for kittens to get lost, we lost ours under the tiniest gap under the bookcase, and it took us an hour to find out where the tiny mews were coming from!! They want to go into every tiny nook and cranny...and are very capable of sqeezing into places and being unable to squeeze back out!

Give the kitten attention, but not too much at first as it will probably be very alert and tense when it arrives in a new area. It may be upset, and petting might help, but if the kitten just wants to hide in a dark corner, let it. I know it's hard to leave a new cute bundle of fluff alone for more than 3 seconds, but if you harrass the cat it will learn to hate you! Keep it in one room for atleast a night, since giving it too much freedom and places to explore will probably lead to it being tense and alert for too long, may make the cat ill etc.

I'd also recommend feeding the kitten little amounts often, rather than leaving a huge load of food in a bowl twice a day or so. Make sure it has plenty of water available, although our cat refuses to drink out of the bowl and insists on playing in the sink instead. But she knows where water is if she gets desperate.

I'd agree with not spending tons on toys and cat beds - we spent over £40 on stuff as soon as we got her, and you know what amuses her most in the world? Plastic bags from Tescos, which I'm sure everyone has 20,000 in a kitchen drawer somewhere! A little dangerous, but you can also make toys out of toilet-roll tubes etc. Catnip won't have much effect until the cat is atleast 5-6 months old.

I've only had a cat with toilet issues once, and its very important to check with the person/place that you get it from that the kitten eats solid food, and is litter trained. Cutting a long story short, we bought a kitten from a woman who assured us the kitten had been vet-checked, was litter trained and on solids. Turned out the poor guy had none of these, and was also completely deformed on the inside and had to be put down, which was very very heartbreaking.

Our now-9 month-old kitten Leeloo, we made sure that she was happy and healthy when we got her, because I couldn't bear to go through the same again. We kept her in the bathroom for hours on the first day, as this was where her box is kept and we wanted her to know this was the toilet room asap. She hid behind the toilet at first for a while, but soon came out to explore the bathroom and paw at things. She was really good at getting to grips with everything and was dying to explore, so we let her in the hallway to play. By night-time she was allowed in the living room, but we kept a constant watch on her, and there are only 2 of us in this flat with no other pets. We didn't leave the doors open and let her have free reign for atleast a few days. We let her sleep in our bedroom with us, as they are sometimes too scared to be left alone in a different room all night, and she slept right in between both our heads every night until she was about 4 months old!

we got really lucky with her - she doesn't really destroy things other than toilet roll and plastic bags, she has known how and where to pee since day 1, she knows to miaow at us like crazy if she is hungry etc and she is good at killing bugs around the house! It's basically a case of wait and see what your cat is like, and if any problems develop then look at how to fix them Hope some of this helps, sorry for the huge post lol

If she goes to the RSPCA you are like 90% gaurenteed a healthy kitty because they will do everything right (of course not everything can be spotted when they're that little but it will be fine!!). My friends kitten likes to climb walls and would only really play with ribbon and stringy things because the toys they got were actually too big and scary for her, they thought she would have been older and bigger! When we saw her another time when she was bigger she was allowed to go outside and if you approached her she would slink down into the grass like she was hunting which was adorable and obviously a good sign. She is being bullied by big tom cats though aaw cute stories.

I like the names KK, Howl is funny (cats don't howl!). It will mostly sleep when you get it home and you'll sit and stare for hours and be like yeeey it's awake and then it will go to sleep again!

Aaw I'm sorry about your kitten Kirsty! I hate people that take advantage of being able to make money quickly from animals, they're dealing with actual lives and peoples emotions, it's terrible! If you get a cat from a breeder demand to see documents.

Thankyou for the advice!

I've just been to a cat home and met two of the most beautiful cats I've ever seen. They were both a year old and one of them was a fairly new mum but we've decided to go with the one who isn't a mummy. She's ginger and white and really tiny - although she's a year old, she looks really young and apparently won't grow a lot bigger. She's really timid because she was abandoned in a car park, but I knelt down next to her and she sniffed my hand and let me stroke her, so obviously she's not afraid of humans or anything.

Her name is Nettie now but we've decided to call her Evie =) and we should be getting her sometime this week. I can't wait, I'm so excited! I'm gonna start buying her stuff soon and setting up her room

Yeeeey!!!!! Congrats *throws confetti* I told you you should get a ginger! Pics as soon as she's settled misses!

Oh I will! I really wanted a ginger one but I didn't think it was likely, I was expecting to get a black and white one.

Ginger cats are lovely congrats
Can't wait to see her

aw, we had a ginger once, we called him Simba cause he had funny markings and the Lion King was just out :p

Atleast if she is a year or so old, she should still be cute and playful, but able to do things for herself.

And yeah Queeny, it was just a local ad in the paper but the woman took £30 for the kitten, told us he was fine, I'm a complete cat lover so I got very very attached to him, but he wasn't eating or peeing properly and he couldn't clean himself so we took him to the vets, just expecting it to be a small problem, but the vet said he didn't even know how the kitten could possibly be alive, his internals were a mess and he apparently shouldn't have been able to feel anything below the waist, which was why he couldn't feel when he was peeing... we had the choice to either take him home where he would just collapse as his organs failed one by one, or put him to sleep. To this day, I've never been so heartbroken, it was awful...

but it happens I guess, don't want to make everyone depressed!! Our kitten Leeloo is insane but very cute, she plays hide and seek! I have a 4 year old cat but he lives at my parents amongst the fields of mice, and he is bonkers too!

awwwww! she sounds so cute

aaaaw!

Again I'm sorry about the kitten I get attached to any animal quickly, even on the tv! and feel sad when I never even met the kitten! A friend had to wait a few months until her dog died, I don't know why they didn't just put her down when she got worse

Anyway weee luberly healthy baby Evie!