Phlosphr got a Cat! My feline virginity has been officially lost.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ok here she is on daddy’s mouse pad.

:eek: did I say Daddy?

She came to us all the way from Oregon. Well I should say her mom did. I am really not used to having a pulsating softball sized fuzzbucket in the house. She’s under a pound and I will admit she’s damn cute. My wife took vacation through forth of July. Even though she can’t climb the stairs yet the door to our room is closed…

Some thoughts about baby animals I was previously unaware of.

They sleep, eat about a teaspoon’s worth of food then sleep. Oh yeah they also sleep, but most of the time they really just sleep. I am amazed at the amount of sleeping this little gal is doing. It was very difficult last night to not let my wife sleep with her. She was downstairs till 11:30 last night sleeping with kitty on her stomach. I was like, “Honey, it’s time to come to bed…” she looked up at me and said, “well what do I do with our little lovey?”
“Baby, just put her in the little kitty nursery we spent an arm and a leg on…!”
She glared back and said “ok, I’ll be up in a minute”

This is not going to be easy keeping that cat out of our room I am seeing this crystal clear today.

Names: Well I like sleepy, as thats what she does all the time, or Duddits (what I like Stephen King)…My wife likes Lila or Maysea or like her last cat’s name Sir Muggles…Not sure what the cat’s name will actually be because. My wife can not stop calling her sweety, cutey or lovey!

Whats going to happen when we have actual kids??

I will keep the pictures coming, as she ages and as she tics me off or pees on my scanner or whatever…
Oh the dog…I almost forgot about him…We brought the kitty home and introduced the two. He took three or four sniffs then just turned around and went back over to his bed. No growling, no sniping, he was better than I thought with the little girl.
I can’t believe there is a real live cat in the house.

What do I do now?

Some Q’s :

How do you house train a cat to go in the kitty toilet in our laundry room?

Declawing is a definite no … how do we keep her little claws off the leather couch? Off my wooden desks? etc…etc… I hear double stick tape works pretty good for the conditioning part?

2

First, did it feel good to lose your kitty virginity?

And second, you don’t need to train her to use her litter box. Simply put her in the box, and move her little front paws like she’s digging. She will get the idea.

Good luck with the scratching. Some cats you can condition to use a scratching post, others you can’t. Do keep plenty of them around, like one per room. I put catnip on mine because little Chloe loves catnip, and it helped a bit.

3

Oh isn’t she so cute :slight_smile: I see those blue eyes have already smitten you!

Yeah they do sleep a lot. Even adult cats sleep 18-20 hours a day.

I’ve never been a fan of giving animals silly names so our cats were/are Paige, Vera Lynn, Desdemona, Gabriella, Penelope, and Veronica. The dog is Alexandria. Hamsters however tend to get silly names :slight_smile: Huey, Whippy and Willy. (All but willy have their own page on our site. Willy is a new arrival)

Your little one looks to me like a Grace or an Abagail.

Kitty training … cats like to bury their waste in sandy loose matter. Put her in the litter box often and she will get the hint.

I’ve heard good things about the sticky tape solution and you may try the soft paws people have recommended. You can also say no a lot and make sure you have an allowed place for her to scratch. Those carpet and sisal covered contraptions work well for this. If you spent $350 on the litter box then $200 for a nice sanctioned scratching haven is probably not out of the question for ya!

Oh and I am loving watching your transformation into a kitty liking type person :slight_smile:

4

Awwwwww. What a cutie pie! She has such a sweet little face! And those eyes! You have a good chance they will stay that intense blue, since Siamese kittens eyes don’t generally change much.

Seconding what Contrary said, assuming kitty stayed with her mother long enough, she already knows about the litter box, you just have to show her where it is. I doubt very seriously she will mess up your scanner.

Have a good, sturdy, interesting scratching post. PetSmart has some very good ones. If she scratches on something else, spritz with a water pistol, or make a LOUD sound. Cats don’t like their fur wet and they hate loud sounds. Praise and reward with favorite treat when she uses the scratching post.

Soon she will not be sleepy all the time, she will want to play in the middle of the night, so don’t call her Sleepy.

5

Yup. Soon she’ll alternate between running around madly, and collapsing. She’ll be adorable no matter what she’s doing- she’s perfect!

You’re calling yourself “Daddy” already. She’ll be sleeping on your bed soon. Probably on your head. :smiley:

6

Oh my goodness! What a wittle cutie pie, luvy dovey wittle girl she is!!! ADORABLE!!!

Congrats on your new addition! Pretty soon you’ll think, “How did I EVER live without kitties?!?” :slight_smile:

Enjoy! Ditto with what Contrary said about the litter box, just put her wittle paws in there and she’s trained!

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We have three cat scratch post’s in her little room. My wife rejoiced when she look her little kitty poop in the now huge-to-her kitty toilet-washer-loud-machine :slight_smile: Kitty seems a little skiddish though, always shaking like she’s cold - probably is the weather here in CT completely sucks, and has for a while. Anyone in New England or New York knows that.

The Scratch Post’s all have these little recepticles in them for cat-nip… And I have a whole bunch currently growing in our garden. We also have this cool hammock type thing in that room, and when kitty can reach it we hope it forms a permanent sleep-bond.

So far she likes the southerly facing bay window in there, we put a walk up to the window so kitty can get up there. She’s pretty agile when not shaking so much. she has her own fuxxy-kitty bean-bag thing up there my wife got her. we think she slept in that last night because it was on the floor near the heater in the morning.

So far she steer’s clear of her Kitty Fountain we got her. She won’t even go near it.

No she won’t be sleeping on my head… Cat’s don’t have mental telepathy do they?

8

Did you say something about double stick tape and conditioning? Please don’t put tape on a cat’s feet. Unless you want your house torn down. But maybe that’s not what you meant.

That is a cute cat. Call it Boo-boo. :smiley:

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Bruce - no not on the cats feet, heh! heh! On the corners of the couches. Imagine you are looking at a couch from behind. The tape goes up each side of the corners. Kitty approaches to scratch. Finds it’s little pads momentarily stuck. I think cats hate that. Dunno, never had one till now.

wow! I’m a cat owner.

Do y’all really think my wifes going to let this cat take over?

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The moment you brought the cat into the house it activated the leather scratch gland located just under the spine behind the neck. Before she even saw the couch the gland began pumping leather scratching instinct into her erasing all possibility of resistance. The equation looks like this:

cute cat+leather couch=scratched leather couch

And FYI, I’ve seen those cat claw guards and haven’t stopped laughing since.

11

if itty bitty kitty is shivering, you might consider putting a heating pad (or electric blanket) in Kitty’s room, set on lowest setting. most cats are natural Heat Seeking Missiles. (i’ve often said if the Pentagon really wanted to make cheap weapons, they should just put cats in the nose section of missiles, and they’ll zero in unerringly on the nearest heat source.) the good news is, it may go quite a ways to conditioning kitty to sleep there, instead of your bedroom.

up until the first time your wife carries kitty up to bed, that is.

kidding! really! c’mon guys, don’t rat me out here.

i’d also suggest maybe turning off the fountain (and maybe even the Automated Kitty Pan) until little fuzzball has had a chance to get used to them (and the whole new surroundings bit in general). many cats get upset by loud noises like vacuum cleaners and other appliances. you don’t want to start an aversion to all these wonderful kitty conveniences while she’s still such a teeny tot.

remember, she’s in a brand new world. everything and everyone there is unknown and potentially scary. her personality will be a big factor in how she approaches all these unknowns. (we have 2 sisters; one is the house Watch Cat, who has to check out everything and everyone, including trotting off to the front door with an under-breath growl when the doorbell rings. the other is the quintesstial scaredy-cat, who runs and hides whenever something strange comes into the house.) but try not to make things scarier than they have to be, right now.

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That’s a Siamese. All siamese are nuts. You will learn this, to your dismany, veeeeery soon.

Name the kitty Screwball for her soon-to-be-apparent behavior, or Minmei because she’s asian & cute.<otaku>

13

Gotcha. I don’t think that’ll work, but I’d be interested to hear if it does. My cat drags himself around the bottom of the sofa (cloth) around and around and around. . . Not enough tape in the world!

14

That is one of the cutest kittens I’ve ever seen - I’m so jealous.
I’ve never had problems with cats failing to use the litterbox - if you are really nervous about her forgetting, or if you have a large (or many storied) house you might want to get more than one litterbox.

I keep my cats nails trimmed, start her now so she’s used to it. Be careful and only trim the tips of the claws (they make special claw trimmers or you can use human nail clippers) if you clip too close to the quick (the pink part) it will bleed like crazy.

Get a scratching post (or a couple) but make sure they are sturdy enough that the cat won’t tip it over when they scratch. They also make cardboard scratchers that lay flat on the floor.

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She’s adorable. You’re probably going to end up with her in your bed, though, so you might as well resign yourself. She won’t be interested in catnip for a while, by the way. DO get her spayed as early as possible. A Siamese queen in heat has to be heard to be believed.

Pet her and love her as much as possible, she IS just a baby after all. And she’s probably chilly. MY Siamese girl has trained my husband to cover her up with a blanket when she gets cold, she scratches at the blanket and then looks over at him as if to say “Hop to it, big boy.”

16

Must…resist…cuteness… :slight_smile:

Congratulations on your new baby!

Only if you don’t beat her to it… :slight_smile:

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That kitten is so darn cute. But mine’s still cuter :wink:
I heard about SoftPaws, and ordered some to try. I’ve heard really good things about it, and we don’t want to declaw kitty, so we’re going to give it a shot. They aren’t too expensive, either. You can look at the website at www.softpaws.com

Good luck!

18

That kitty will be sleeping on your bed before the week is out. Guarenteed. :wink:

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What an adorable baby! How old is she? She looks like 6 weeks or so to me, which is still very tiny. It’s probably best to shut her in one room when she’s on her own (with all the kitty conveniences, of course) - a whole house is really enormous when you’re that tiny, and finding her way back to the litter box might be hard for such a little girl. Like all babies, they suddenly really have to go, and if she gets lost, she might have an accident.

Absolutely, get her somewhere warm to sleep, if she doesn’t have it already. A heated bed probably isn’t necessary if there’s somewhere she can crawl under a blanket or otherwise into a small enclosed space that will warm with her body heat.

Double-stick tape is pretty good for protecting stuff, and giving her lots of praise and treats for using the scratching posts is also important. The catnip won’t affect her until she’s six months old or so. Little bitty kitten claws are super sharp, but don’t do much damage on most things. She will be able to climb curtains, though, so beware.

She will need lots of short play sessions in between sleeping. We found absolutely endless amusement with ours by sitting cross-legged on the floor and dragging around a slightly crumpled magazine reply card. They would go flying after it as soon as it disappeared behind a back or under a leg, and generally do laps around our bodies trying to reach it.

Since she’s so tiny, she’s still being socialized as a cat. If she claws or nips at you, say “ouch!” and ignore her for a bit. If she’s persistent, exclaim again and then gently hold her still by the neck/scruff, covering her up with your body with yours. These are both the things her mother would do to teach her to play nice.

20

One look at that cute little face and I foresee your resolve slipping minute by minute.

I think this picture sums up the whole eat/sleep thing better than words. May you enjoy her for many years to come.