I feed my cat Innova EVO and she’s healthy enough, and not TOO fat.
Last I heard, there’s no evidence for these claims - for example, dental disease is caused by specific mouth bacteria, and obesity is about whether you feed your pet an appropriate number of calories - AND you and your cat can get germs like Salmonella, Clostridium, pathogenic strains of E. coli, etc., from raw food. This happens occasionally with problems with manufactured food as well, resulting in recalls, but raw meat from any source, fresh or not, is an avoidable and more common source of these pathogens. If you are a healthy adult and no children or elderly people will ever have contact with your cat, then go for it, but be aware of the risks. The risks to healthy adults and healthy cats are not huge, but they are still elevated and better proven than any putative benefit of feeding raw meat. Here’s a fact sheet from the blog of some infectious disease veterinarians from the U of Ontario.
I have been feeding Wysong cat food for a couple years and been happy with it (I switched because I needed to get palatable calories in a picky eater wasting away from kidney disease), but I have nothing against other brands.
OP, cats are much easier to take care of than dogs. Some food and water and a litterbox with litter will get you started. I would not buy too much litter or food or spend too much on anything because cats can be finicky and will snub whatever they don’t like.
Once the cats teach you that they are in charge and you are their slave you’ll do fine.
LOL. I guess I’ve not really noticed the mess being that bad. With four cats (one fluffy), two dogs (one fluffy), a large bird, an old house (dust, dust, dust), and keeping the windows open as much as possible (more dust), the mess from the cardboard doesn’t really make that much difference for us. 
When did this “one box each plus one” thing get started? I don’t remember ever hearing that until the last few years. I’ve never run more than two litter boxes, usually just one. The only times I’ve had problems were due to either illness or spite - and I don’t think the spiteful kittie would have behaved better just because she had her own box (if the other cats had left it alone, that is).
I’m mildly reassured to see some people feeding what we feed, Wellness and Katz-N-Flocken.
This might not be emphasized enough. Our cat ran up $3100 in emergency vet bills in the first six months after we rescued him – all for the old Sunday night emergency room “I can’t pee and my belly’s all swelled up!” routine.
Now we saturate everything with water and tease him with the sink faucet and otherwise cram water into him as often as we can. To be honest, I considered waterboarding him after that last vet fee.
That’s what we feed the dogs as a supplement to their prepared diet. 
The final say on any matters relating to the litter box goes to the cats. If they don’t like the brand of litter or type of box (some cats dislike covered litter boxes), or the number of boxes, or anything else about their litter box, they can and will make your life misery until you change the litter box arrangements. Don’t try to fight them on it, because you can’t win. Even if you take the cat back to the shelter, that doesn’t get rid of the smell of cat pee in your house, so you can’t really describe it as a “win”. Litter box battles are like global thermonuclear war that way, only global thermonuclear war probably doesn’t smell as bad.
Different cats have different ideas about what sort of litter box arrangements are tolerable and what aren’t. It’s even possible that two cats that have been happily sharing a litter box will suddenly decide that they can’t any more. That happened to us, seemingly out of the clear blue sky. Maybe there was some triggering event for this that the cats could tell you about, if they could talk, but there was nothing obvious to the humans in the household. Getting another box did seem to help.
Been there. Twice ( once on a Holiday, once on a Sunday ). Ugh. I really like my local emergency vets, but I also really wish I’d seen less of them ( we can add the third time with the degloved tail tip ).
I usually don’t buy into all the “cats are deliberately evil and perverse” stuff, but their tendency to get desperately ill or injured only on the weekends does lend that notion some credence ;).
To be fair, there has been almost no real research on different diets your pet cat can eat and the influence on their health.
But it’s been well-established, and seems like a matter of common sense to me, that most species will have the best health outcomes if we replicate the diet that they have been thriving on for the last few million years of their evolution (and will return to effortlessly if not provided with processed pet food, in the case of cats) as closely as possible. We’ve already been through this with all zoo animals, and all wild animal kept as pets. An ancestral diet is vital if you want an animal to live without developing chronic preventable diseases, and have the best reproductive outcomes.
I never knew having a cat could be so difficult.
For me. Find a place for food. Fill bowl with kitty crunchies and refill when getting low. Try to find somewhere that the dog can’t get to it, too. Provide a small quantity of wet food twice a day when you can’t stand the howling and whining any more. This only started with the most recent addition.
Find a place for a water bowl. I have a couple, but they’re for the dogs. The cats can find them when they’re thirsty or drink from the dripping tap.
Find a place for litter. Again, where the dogs can’t get to the box. I do have two, but that’s because someone gave me one. I’ve had multiple cats and a single box, and not had a problem, but then again, two boxes means you can go a day or two longer before having to clean them.
Figure out whatever silly games your cat likes to play. Play them. My cats are older. The dogs steal their toys, so they are resigned to a life without kitty toys. They get lots of snuggles instead.
Cats are easy. Food, water, love, a warm place to sleep, snuggles (optional with some cats) and a place to pee/poop and they’re good to go. YMMV
Dry food recommendation not already mentioned - Orijen or Acana
To be fair, this sort of perverse behavior is not limited to cats. Horses spend most of their time standing around figuring out expensive and inconvenient ways to hurt themselves, preferably destroying property in the process.
I will concede that there has not been a ton of research on potential benefits, and therefore I would consider commercial diets (which are required to meet nutritional minimums and some of which have been tested in actual colonies of cats) to be equal nutritionally to a raw diet that has been adequately balanced with professional help to ensure that there are no deficiencies or excesses. It is a whole separate issue that there have been multiple studies showing that there is a high prevalence of zoonotic pathogens in raw diets, leading to increased carriage and shedding of these pathogens. I am not looking to convert anyone, I just want new cat owners reading this thread to know that there’s currently no empirical evidence showing benefit to a raw diet - who knows what the future will bring - and that there seems to be some risk to the cat and to people in contact with the cat.
I agree with you that companion animal nutrition has been neglected until relatively recently, and even in people we are still figuring out how to go beyond the minimum requirements to maximizing health.
One I just thought of. Cats can, will and do change their minds about their habits, sleeping patterns, food preference and all sorts of things.
For example, my boy has very happily eaten dry cat food for years now and would turn his nose up at wet food. After his most recent bout of respiratory problems, he has developed a liking for the wet food and won’t touch his dry.
He’ll go for weeks going to bed with me every night and sleeping there until we get up. Then he’ll decide that he wants to stay up nights for a while. (Running around, napping, plotting world domination…the usual cat night activities)
Some days he’ll sit quietly on his perch and just view whats going on, other days he follows us around because he wants held or he might just decide that meowing non-stop is a better option.
But as long as you go with the flow and realize that virtually any behavior is ‘normal’ for a cat, you’ll get along fine.
One thing a lot of people don’t know about cats is that most of them are manufactured with a nickle-cadmium core (ever since 1986). This is usually not an issue except if the cat were to die near a potable water source. If the core is expelled from the cat upon its death, it can contaminate water and ruin the topsoil. If you don’t put the cat to sleep, it’s recommended that within 4 to 8 hours of the cat’s death, place the body in lead-lined box and drop it off at your local metal recycling center. Generally there is no charge to drop it off because the core can be recycled to make newer cats. Hope this helps!
I urge you to skip this post as I am a Horrible cat owner. (I now have 2!)
Your friends are getting used to you as you are to them. They are going to try to pick some spots in your routine so you can play with them regularly, so you must be strong.
Avoid the:
*But I’m just rolling here on this step just for you! You mean you really were trying to go up those stairs?
*You got up. This seat is mine now. As is this plate of food…
- Tell me how to open doors! Please!?!?
*…but your belly Needed to be made soft! - Me sitting here staring at you means share your food with me. Now!
- Litter boxes. You can clean them now or buy new shoes later.
*“Ooooo-Roooo!” means I love you. And you can feed me now.
*Pulling your shoe-laces out of old shoes/sneakers you were throwing out and pulling it for them means you love them too. - If ice cream was bad for them, they wouldn’t be sticking their noses in yours.
- Come January, you sleep with your feet at funny angles & they keep your feet warm. Its a Symbiotic Relationship.
- At 3AM, if you get up to Pee, the warm spot is Fair Game. 'Nuff said.
It’s even worse when they jump into the unused dining chairs, expecting us to fix them a plate too. We eventually just put the dining chairs that we don’t usually use in another area, and if we have guests we put the needed chairs at the table. And warn the guests about the cats.
Point out that conquering the world and then dominating it is actually a lot of work. Watch him decide that it’s not worth it, and he’ll settle for just dominating YOU.
He did that from the first time we saw him. We were at the shelter looking at the cats and he waited until we got close, stuck a paw out of the cage and gave the most heartbreaking ‘Please take me home’ meow. He’s been the boss ever since.
popping a question here - do people in high-rise apartments keep cats? if so, is self-defenestration a problem?
…for the people or the cats?
From what I hear, it can be, yes. If a cat is allowed out on a balcony and they see a bird or other distraction, they have been known to leap first and ask questions (hopefully, if they survived the fall) later. It’s recommended that if you live in a high-rise and let your cats on the balcony, you do something to screen it off or otherwise prevent the cats from accidental falls.
I wouldn’t keep windows without screens open if I had cats in a high-rise apartment, just in case. They like to sleep in windows and could fall out. I doubt they’d try to jump (though they will jump off, say, a deck that’s above the first floor. They’re brave enough for distances like that.
All of this is just my advice, and it should be treated as such. No training of any kind, besides a life time of happy cat ownership.
I will throw in http://www.worldsbestcatlitter.com/ again, for good measure.
I’ve had indoor cats as pets my entire life. this is the best litter I have ever used, hands down. It is not cheap, but it last a really long time if cleaned frequently and it is a great product.
All this other advice is also great. We did the trimming claws thing to our current kitties from the day we adopted them from the Rescue League and they are very tolerant. (Though Mrs. Inthewater usually does it these days).
Also, this may be total BS, but we were told by a pet trainer to take the young kittens and sit them in your lap. Detain them there until they accept it and then let them go on their way if they wish. It seems to make them more “lap friendly” or at least puts you in a dominant role in their minds.
Also already mentioned, but avoid using your bare hands / feet as toys or they will always think of them as such. There are fun cat toy gloves that let you play with them in such a manner without inflaming the issue.
The cat tree or jungle gym…many cats love being up high, or at least having a place to go that is off the ground. Best investment we’ve ever made for them.
For controlling bad behavior, the ol’ spray water bottle works wonders. Another trick, take an empty pop can and put some change in it. Tape the hole closed and if they are engaging in “bad” behavior, toss the can somewhere near the cat (not AT the cat for obvious reasons) and the sound will startle them. They will sometimes associate the bad sound with the action, and it can be very effective.
Good luck with the kitties. 