Thread: Habits and how to break them!

Originally Posted by jckkerrison

Hi & welcome..... Sorrry to say your first instincts were right that is far too young for even a normal kitten to be away from mum,from six weeks she is teaching her babes the niceties of life & it learns right & wrongs,it also starts to learn to socialise & this should be done with its litter mates.....
A good mainecoon breeder would not let their babes go until they have had both of their vaccinations done plus kept it a week to make sure there are no reactions to it so the earliest you should look to be getting your babe is 12 to 13 weeks......
He shouldn't arrive pretty much litter trained he should be fully trained & again that side of his life would have only just been starting,mum would have still been cleaning him up at that point too,I think you have hit the nail on the head that as he obviously wanted a pee at the point you put him on your bed his little brain is now associating it with being the right place & as hard as it seems as poor little fella should still be with mum I think the only way you will break it is for him to be shut up at night with his tray,could you leave one of the other cats with him, I always used to have a "nannie" cat that slept with my babes the first few nights so it didn't feel lonely before putting it into the big cats bedroom. Poor little mite I feel so sorry for him,he obviously is better with you & being loved but those type of breeders no matter what breed they have make me very cross as no way is that a good breeder at all,you should have pedigree papers with him but i would lay a bet that you haven't......!
With donnad though post some pictures of him so we can have an arrrh session.....xxx

Hi there! Many thanks for your reply; it's all what I guessed really. When we first visited to meet him and put a deposit on him, I did ask the breeder why she was planning to 'move him on' so young, but I was made to feel a bit like an interfering fool, to be honest!

Then when we received the "come and get him" email, and we were told he was only actually 6 weeks old, I queried it again. Again, I was looked at as if I was an idiot. After all, who am I to argue with someone who is, apparently, an experienced breeder?

Anyway, thankfully he has my older cats to teach him some manners (he's had a couple of swipes to the head already, but he'll soon learn not to pounce on and chew another cat's tail!). Apart from the peeing, he doesn;t seem to be suffering from being away from mom.....he's confident, well balanced, calm and settled......although, come to think of it, he's very mucky straight after using the litter tray - we're getting through baby wipes at a rate of knots! - so maybe he does need mom's influence a bit!

I think we'll have to start locking him up in the living room with one of our older boys, as he seems to be the most tolerant of Neo's kittenish ways. We don't mind doing that; I know he'll use the litter tray so the only risk is shredded carpet by the closed door, but he's never clawed at carpet til now so I can't see that being a problem. The older cat might object to being locked up though....we never really close any of our doors, the cats have free rein.

To be honest, and I don't really care if she sees this post (not sure she's the type to use a forum), but she wasn't what I'd call a "good breeder"....when we first went to meet Neo (newly born), the house stunk to high heaven and the floor was covered entirely in rubbish and animal hair. I couldn't get the smell out of my nostrils and I felt sick all the way home. Then when we went to collect Neo, he was in a complete mess.....he smelled so bad (not cat smell, just dirty house smell), he had a bloody-coloured crust around his nose and gunked-up eyes, his bottom was matted with dried poop, and, as the breeder handed him to me, she casually ran her fingers through his coat and said something about him possibly having fleas.....she didn't think he did, but she said "you never know". She also tried to weigh him, and kept saying he was 200g......he probably weighed more than that as a newborn!


As soon as we got into the car, my husband and I both agreed that we needed to get to a pet shop ASAP to get some suitable flea treatment. When we got him home, we cleaned him up a bit (it took a few days for the 'dirty house' smell to go from his coat, though). I was very concerned about his young age, so I did take him to see my own vet the next day to get him checked over....he got a clean bill of health, thankfully.

Oh, and no, we got no pedigree papers.......but he was cheaper than a papered kitten. We saw mom when we went to first meet Neo, who looked like a pure bred ginger tabby MC and we were shown a photo of 'daddy' who is a regular tabby MC

In hindsight, we should have waited and found a better breeder who took better care of her kittens, but we loved him and we went with our hearts over our heads! We don';t regret having him though, he's part of the family already!

Here are a couple of 'day he came home' pics to be going on with.....he's a bit wet on the second photo, cos he'd been rubbed with very diluted flea spray