Kitten Week: What Nobody Tells You

The first seven days with a kitten are chaos. Here is the list we wish someone had handed us at the door.

A kitten is a very small animal with a very large amount of opinion. The first week is a negotiation about sleep, litter, furniture, and the ankles of everyone in the house. Here is what we learned, in roughly the order we learned it.

1. The room, not the house

Start the kitten in one room with its litter tray, food, water, and a bed. The whole house is overwhelming. One room is a territory it can map in an hour, and a kitten that knows where its litter tray is will use it. Expand a room at a time over the first couple of weeks.

2. Litter is a negotiation too

Low sides. Unscented litter. Scoop twice a day. If the kitten goes elsewhere, it is almost never spite. The tray is too far, too tall, too scented, or too dirty. Fix the tray and the problem fixes itself.

3. Hands are not toys

This is the big one. It is adorable when a four-week-old kitten attacks your fingers. It is not adorable at four kilograms. Use a wand toy from day one and keep your hands out of play. The kitten does not know the difference between hand-play now and hand-play later. You are setting the rules of the next fifteen years.

Everything a kitten does at eight weeks, it will do at eight years, only bigger.

4. They sleep hard and sudden

A kitten will go from sprinting across the room to unconscious in about four seconds, often mid-step. This is normal. Let it sleep where it falls, unless where it falls is the dishwasher.

5. The vet visit is not optional

First check, vaccinations, worming, and a chat about neutering. Book it in the first week. Book the second visit before you leave.

6. Take the photos

They are kittens for roughly ten minutes. You will not believe how small it was. Take more photos than feels reasonable. Then take more.