There’s so much valuable information here - I had NO CLUE that onions and garlic are poisonous to kitties. I knew about puppies and chocolate - that didn’t translate to felines in my mind.
Thanks for the string, rubberband and tinsel warnings too. Never crossed my mind at all.
I closed the toilet lid on my way out - I just had a feeling. Chico is so little and so adventurous - I’m glad I did.
I bought a collapsable pet carrier, to take him for his shots - Petsmart has a $41 special but it’s not at the one near me. I’ll try The Humane Society in my area and see what they offer here.
I bought Kitten Meow Mix (with 37 essential nutrients:)), Friskies Tender Bites, and Pounce treats to start. I’ll pick up some wet canned food too to see what fits the best.
I knew I could count on Dopers. This is why this is my favorite board.
Yep. I’d also add: keep a preventative tube of Petromalt or other hairball treat around, and buy a brush. Get that cat used to being regularly brushed and handled early. Your cat may prefer a different type of brush – I kept experimenting through 3-4 different kinds until I found one my two Maine Coon mixes (longhair types) would tolerate.
One of the best purchases I ever made was this giant silicon rubber sponge for removing cat hair. It does really well and is better and more economic than the lint rollers which only pick up the thinnest layer of hair in one go. I save my lint rollers for clothes, and use the silicon rubber sponge everywhere else – it picks up hair and rolls it into a clump that you can pick off for disposal very easily.
Chico’s a boy cat, right. Keep feeding him a mix of wet and dry to ensure he stays hydrated. Cats often have problems staying appropriately hydrated. Urinary issues can be dangerous to cats, especially male cats, since their plumbing is narrower than female cats.
Cats have the memory of a goldfish, for the most part, so hitting them is not an appropriate punitive method. Squirt bottle of water or verbal correction works for me. (either a high-pitched “tss-tss!” or “NO!”)
Get a recommendation for a 24 hour emergency vet and keep it around. ER vets will naturally be more expensive, but they’re great for those offhour and holiday emergencies. (Like Thanksgiving weekend. sigh)
Be aware that changing his food – even changing it to a really fancy-schmancy high-quality expensive food – may result in some unpleasant changes in the contents of the litterbox. And it may take a couple of weeks to resolve itself. So once you find something that works for him, stick with it. And if you need to change foods, change it a little at a time.
Also, when you take him to the vet, talk to the vet about when to stop feeding him “kitten” food – our cats ended up overweight because we fed them kitten food until they were about a year old, like it said on the food packages. The vet said, “What?! Why are you still feeding them that?!” Um… because it said for cats up to 1 year old? How were we supposed to know? So just make sure you communicate with your vet about that – our beasts now need expensive diet food.
I’ve heard that tomatoes, potatoes (especially green tomatoes or potatoes), avocados, grapes, and raisins are other foods you want to avoid giving your cat, though onions, garlic, and chocolate are probably the worst people foods for them. You also want to avoid giving them too much of anything too fatty, which can cause diarrhea (just like it can in people who aren’t used to eating fatty foods). Cats with diarrhea are not always good about making it to the litter box in time, either.
You might think that these foods, being toxic to cats and not being meat, would be something cats won’t beg for. Not necessarily. Luna sometimes begs for onions and avocado. I tell her she refutes both Darwin and intelligent design when she does that, but she doesn’t listen. You can’t assume that anything they beg for must be OK for them.
The only people food I ever give my cats is a little bit of raw chicken, turkey, beef, or fish when we’re cooking those, and the juice from cans of tuna. Luna used to like hard-boiled egg whites, and we would give her those, but she seems to have grown out of her liking for eggs. Most of the food we cook includes either onions or garlic, so no table scraps for our kitties.
The other danger of giving cats people food is that they’ll stop eating their cat food because they like the people food better, or just because they’re filling up on people food. That’s not good, because cats need more of an amino acid called taurine than humans do (people can synthesize it in their bodies, cats can’t). Cats may not get enough of it from people food, especially if the people food doesn’t include a lot of meat or poultry. Cats that aren’t getting taurine will go blind and develop heart problems, and eventually die. This is why you can’t put a cat on a vegetarian diet.
Something to be careful of is butcher’s twine, if you use it when you cook meat or if you buy rotisserie chickens from a store that uses it. The flavor it gets from the food makes it extra tempting to cats, and it’s dangerous because it is string. When we get a rotisserie chicken that comes with butcher’s twine, I keep it in my sight at all times between when we cut it off the chicken and when it goes in the (closed) trash can, and try to keep the time elapsed between those events to a minimum. We don’t use butcher’s twine when we cook. We used to not use it because we’re lazy and don’t really care what our food looks like, but now we don’t use it because it’s dangerous to the cats.
My Katya loves Friskies Tender Hairball Remedy treats. She won’t take Petromalt, but she loves hairball treats.
Yes.
Also be aware that cats can be picky about their litter. Find a brand and type he’ll use, and stick with it- don’t buy something different because it’s on sale this week. Some cats won’t use a litter box with scented litter. Cats can also be picky about the type of litter box- a lot of them don’t like one that’s too small (or will end up going over the side if the box is too small), and some cats don’t like covered litter boxes. Cats that don’t like something about their litter box will often think outside the box, so to speak.
if you do give the wee one a brown bag to play with be carefull of handles. cut the handles before putting down the bag. wee heads can get stuck in handles.
cats loooooove boxes. you can’t go wrong with a box. it is hours and hours of fun.
enjoy the little guy. having a sleep buddy is great in the cold weather.
We had to buy a covered trash can to replace the non-covered ones in the bathrooms and kitchen- Biscuit kept swiping stuff out of them and, oddly, putting it in the dog’s water dish. I’d come home from work and find wadded up paper towels and kleenex and food wrappers in Auggie’s dish.
Ask your vet about the flea treatments- there are really good ones that are better than flea collars, but you have to be careful about using them on kittens. Flea collars don’t work all that well.
As you’ve already found out, there is nothing sweeter than waking up with a purring kitty sleeping next to you. Both of mine sleep on my feet every night!
NO PLASTIC! It can hold bacteria and give your kitty acne, or make them sick in other ways.
I’d also recommend that you discourage vertical scratching, even with a scratching post, by training him to scratch horizontally on a scratching box, like this.
He is absolutely precious! Congratulations to you both!!!
Yeah, but it’s so funny when they tear around the house, trying to escape the thing that’s stuck on them.
(Laughing your ass off at your cat’s misfortune is also part of cat ownership.)
A litterbox solution - don’t be afraid to get a BIG litterbox. We use a rubbermate storage box for litter - it’s about two feet by 18 inches, and about 18 inches tall. Kitties can jump in easily enough, but they can’t fling their litter everywhere. Those silly little litterboxes they sell in pet stores are just made for getting litter everywhere, especially if your kitty is one of those who develops the habit of earthmoving (Jim’s cat needs to move every single piece of litter from one side of the box to the other every time she’s in there).
He’s settled in and he’s great company for me. I’m glad to have him as part of my family.
More thanks to all of you guys for your help. His favorite toy is a large mouse shaped, horizontal scratching post with a flexible tail that he chases.
He eats EVERYTHING I feed him - he prefers the soft food, but I’ve been limiting that to once daily.
Wet food is actually better (closer to a natural diet) than dry, but it does get expensive. I have a kitten (a year old now) that eats everything, too. His favorite is paper.
You can’t assume that anything they beg for must be OK for them.