If you have other pets
in the home, it’s important to get your new kitten to the vet before bringing
it home. Even the youngest of kittens can carry diseases and parasites that
will afflict the other pets in your home. Save yourself the headache by doing a
little prevention at the veterinarian’s office
. A new kitten’s health schedule
should be the following:
- 3 weeks: fecal exam
- 6 weeks: fecal exam
- 9-10 weeks:
FHV/FCV/FPV vaccine, ELISA test for FeLV, FeLV vaccine, fecal exam
- 12-14 weeks:
FHV/FCV/FPV vaccine, FeLV vaccination, Rabies vaccine, fecal exam
If you decide to bring
your new kitten home before these shots and exams are complete, keep your
kitten in quarantine until it has received all the necessary exams and
vaccines.
When your kitten is
finally ready to be brought home, be sure to have planned enough in advance to
have a bowl full of food and water ready, as well as a sleeping box and litter
box in the cat’s new living space. The kitty will quickly learn to call this space
their own and will need to learn that the litter box is the appropriate place
to “go.”
To introduce a new
kitten to existing cats in the home, place the new kitten in a room by itself
for a few days with a slight crack in the doorway so that the other cats can
introduced to the new kitten’s curious nose that will appear in the doorway.
Rub down your cat with a towel and place the towel in the existing cat’s
sleeping space so that the cat will become accustomed to the kittens scent – do
the same for the kitten, so that the kitten sleeps with a towel that carries
the scent of the existing cat. After three days, the new kitten can now be
“introduced” to the existing cats in the home.
Spaying and
Neutering
Males: The earlier the
better. Male kittens can be neutered as soon as they are at least two pounds in
weight and have two descended testis. Delaying neutering increases the
likelihood of testicular and prostate cancer, and can result in a pet
population explosion in your very own neighborhood.
Females: Spay before the
cats’s first heat cycle – delaying spaying beyond the first heat cycle
increases the likelihood of breast and uterine cancer.
