Newbie Questions

Jen, congrats on the upcoming partnership with the new kitty 🙂 I put up a pink tag in the right hand corner of the page, there are many threads that will show up with advice or questions/answers given before. How old is your new kitten? The foster woman should be able to help with the food(s) given to the little one, if feeding store bought foods it should be be kitten food for at least the first year. Check to see what type of litter she uses also, their little feet are just as tender as ours are when it comes to what they are walking on. As for the meowing, of course he is lonely he has had his littermates up to now. There are things you can do like use a hot water bottle or one of the soy/wheat filled socks warmed up and having a towel wrapped around it to comfort the baby. Others know much more than I about raising kittens, I normally have adopted adult or elderly cats and it has been years (12 yrs) since I had babies of 4 weeks old. BTW welcome to TDK 🙂

Jen,

Will you be leaving the little one alone because you have a regular job? Or will it just be a few hours while you run errands, shop, etc.?

If you won’t be gone on a regular basis, you will probably be able to keep the little one happy by leaving the TV on. Lots of animals like the Animal Planet station.

If you are going to be gone for hours each day, here are a couple of suggestions:

1. Make friends with a neighbor as soon as you can and take the kitty to her apartment while you are gone. It would be good for both of them. OR (better still)

2. Talk one of your new neighbors into getting a cat. If the new kitty spends most of the time in your apartment, but belongs to another tenant the landlord can’t make too much of a fuss.

The last way to work with the Only One Pet rule is if your kitten is a Companion Animal. I don’t know what qualifies you to move to the new housing but if it’s a disability that justifies having a Companion Animal your doctor can help you with the paperwork. A Companion Animal doesn’t usually count as a pet so you could get the cat and yourself another pet.

You may discover, if you are home most of the time, that kitty is perfectly happy with just you as his family. He’ll need someone to talk to and to talk to him, someone to play with him when he’s feeling frisky and to cuddle with when he’s feeling lovey. If he’s alone a couple hours at a time, he’ll just sleep and wait for you.

oh, good luck Jen. You are thinking so well about this and should have a wonderful relationship with your new baby. Am typing this one-handed because my baby boy — going on 7 years — is curled up sleeping around my left hand. I call this “the fur glove”