Thread: Kittens Vs Toddlers

You know, it’s perfectly normal to have those kind of doubts when the arrival of the kitten gets closer. Even I wonder about many things now that Esme will join us in 2 weeks! I keep asking myself how the other cats will react and whether she’ll like them. I hope that our 4 cats will accept her without a lot of protest and that she won’t be too stressed out. I wonder how the interaction with our rabbits will be (we have 3 rabbits running around the house) and I hope we can teach Esme to handle them with the same care and respect the other cats do.

So you see… if it’s not toddlers you have to worry about, it’s something else. But it’s a good sign that you ask yourself these questions, that means that you care a lot about both your children and your kitten!

What I do when a kitten joins us; is:
- I keep Willow out of our living room for a couple of hours when the new kitten arrives. He can be really grumpy at first when there’s a new “intruder” on his territory. He changes his mind after a couple of days, but the first 2 – 3 days he is really grumpy. So I give the kitten the chance to check out our living room (most important room for the cats in our house) without too much stress. Pixel usually takes care of the new kitten just like she’s the mother and Indy loves to play. We don’t know how Axxes will react, though, cause he was the last one to join us, so that will be a surprise. (so maybe it won’t be such a bad idea to let the kitten discover its new home without the children around).
- I try to give all our cats the same amount of attention. I think that will be important with children as well: to let them know that the cat is not more important than they are – but that it’s also part of the family and that it needs to be taken care of as well. The ideal way is if you can involve children as much as possible: let them help you with feeding the cat, try to find a way to play with the children and the cat at the same time, teach them how to pet and cuddle the cat – that way they will see that there’s no need to be jealous, but that they have a real great friend in the cat! (as a child I always found comfort in being with my pets whenever I felt down… I’m so glad that my parents had a hobby farm with lots of pets!)
-That Feather Waggler is a very good toy! Over here the cats just love to play with it! Other toys that they really like are a small laser light and a dragonfly

-What I also always do, is use a Feliway diffuser in the room where the cats spend most of their time. This is the Feliway website, where you can read a lot more information about the product: http://www.feliway.com/gb
I have to say that it really helps our cats – it basically reduces stress by spreading pheromones into the air (makes cats feel happy). Humans can’t smell it by the way. I don’t know where you can buy it in the UK, but over here only vets and pharmacies sell it.

I do have a little comment on the sleeping in the bedroom thing: once a cat is used to that (and believe me, they very quickly are used to sharing the bed with you!), it is almost impossible to teach them otherwise later on. Our cats are free to sleep in the bed with us and we’re not planning on changing that, but it is something you should think about in advance.