Our First Week with a Kitten: The 10 Things That Made Room
An eight-week-old kitten, forty square metres and one sofa. The bus ride home, the litter corner, the scratched armrest, and what made the flat hers.
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Forty square metres and a shoebox
We live in a forty-square-metre flat on the second floor, with one sofa, one window that gets sun and a kitchen you can touch both walls of. In early October we went to a shelter across town to look at a kitten and came back with one, which is how that always goes.
She was eight weeks old, grey, and arrived in a cardboard box with holes punched in it. We had not bought anything; we had told each other we would see what she needed first, which sounded wise and turned out to mean a week of ordering things at midnight.
This is that week, in the order it happened, with the things appearing where we reached for them.
4 p.m. — the bus home
The box lasted eleven minutes. Somewhere on the second bus a grey paw came out of a hole, then a face, and one of us spent the rest of the journey with both hands over the lid while the other looked up carriers.
The sling that fitted under a coat
The soft cotton pet sling carrier, about $31, is a crossbody bag with a padded strap, a zip across the top and a small clip inside for the collar. It arrived two days later and has done every vet trip since: she goes in, the zip closes to the width of her head, and she rides against a ribcage with a coat over the top, seeing nothing and hearing a heartbeat. It is a sling and not a box — for a long car journey or a flight you still want something rigid — but for a kitten on a bus it is exactly the right amount of carrier.
Soft Cotton Pet Sling Carrier with Safety Hook
$31.19
The cave she chose over the sofa
The cat-eared plush cave bed, about $12, is a round grey cave with a small doorway and two fleece ears on top, and it is the first thing we ordered the night she arrived. We put it in the corner of the living room where she had spent the evening behind the radiator. By morning she was in it; by the third day she was dragging it, slowly, across the floor towards the window. It is kitten-sized and she will overflow it by spring, but at this price it has already been worth a week of knowing where she is.
Cat-Eared Plush Cave Bed
$11.79
That first evening she ate a little, drank nothing we could see, and used the tray the shelter had sent us home with. Then she walked out of the tray and across the sofa, and we found out why people talk about litter.
That first evening — the litter corner
In a house you put the litter tray somewhere out of the way. In our flat there is no out of the way. It went in the eighty centimetres between the washing machine and the wall, and by bedtime there was a trail of litter from there to the bed.
The mat that kept the litter by the machine
The double-layer honeycomb cat litter mat, about $12, is two sheets of foam: a honeycomb top that catches the litter stuck to her paws, and a solid base that holds it. Once a day you lift the corner and tip what is in the base back into the tray. The trail stopped the day it arrived. It is sized for clumping or pellet litter — a very fine litter falls straight through and sits in the base until you shake it — and it is, like the tray, the least glamorous thing we own and the one we would buy first.
Double-Layer Honeycomb Cat Litter Mat
$12.39
The tray itself is still the shelter’s plastic one. In a flat this size, a kitten who is reliable about where she goes is worth more than any lid.
Day two — the sofa
The sofa is grey linen and it is the only piece of furniture in the flat that matters. On the second morning we found her stretched up the left armrest, claws in, with the expression of a cat who has found her calling.
The guard on the armrest she’d already chosen
The self-adhesive sofa scratch guard, about $18, is a two-metre roll of grey, carpet-textured fabric with adhesive on the back. We cut a piece to wrap the left armrest from floor to cushion and stuck it down, and she kept scratching exactly where she had been scratching, on the guard. It is designed to be clawed, so it has slowly fluffed up in the middle and the linen under it is untouched. A free-standing post two metres away was ignored entirely; the lesson was to protect the spot she had picked, not to offer a better spot. Test a corner first on velvet or a loose weave — the adhesive can lift fibres when it comes off.
Self-Adhesive Sofa Scratch Guard (60 x 200 cm roll)
$18.15
The bird on the door handle
The squeaky bird teaser on elastic cord, about $19, is a fabric bird with feather wings on a long elastic with a finger ring at the top. In the evenings we dangle it; during the day it hangs from the bedroom door handle and bounces when she hits it, and it chirps, which she finds outrageous. It redirected most of the energy that had been going into the sofa. The feathers were the first casualty, and the chirp is loud enough that we take it off the handle at night.
Squeaky Bird Teaser on Elastic Cord
$18.79
The thing under the cloth
The motion-activated hide-and-seek feather toy, about $9, is a patterned cloth with a small motor in the middle that drags a feather around underneath it. She stalks the bump. She pounces on the bump. The bump moves. It is the toy that bought us twenty quiet minutes to eat dinner on the second night and most nights since. It takes batteries, which are not in the box, and she has worked out how to get under the cloth, so it now lives on a shelf until we switch it on.
Motion-Activated Hide-and-Seek Feather Toy
$8.55
By the fourth day the sofa was safe and the bedroom door squeaked. What we had not noticed, because we were watching the sofa, was that her water bowl was still full.
Day four onwards — settling in
A kitten that is not drinking is the thing a vet asks about first, and ours had been ignoring a full bowl beside her food since she arrived. The last four days of the week were about making the flat somewhere she wanted to live, and that started with water.
The fountain she drank from in an hour
The ROJECO stainless steel pet water fountain, about $26, is a steel bowl on a quiet USB pump with a water-level window in the side. We put it in the hallway, away from the food, and switched it on. She was drinking from it within the hour and has not looked at the bowl since. Moving water, in a different place from dinner, is apparently the whole secret. The steel top comes off for the dishwasher; the filter wants changing monthly and the pump wants a rinse at the same time, so it is not a thing you can forget about entirely.
ROJECO Stainless Steel Pet Water Fountain
$26.49
The bowl she stopped pushing around
The BOOTEELY tilted stainless steel cat bowl with stand, about $14, is a shallow steel dish that sits at an angle in a wire stand. Before it, mealtimes meant chasing a plastic saucer across the tiles; after it, the food stayed where the food was, and a kitten with a short face could reach the last of it without flattening her whiskers. The stand is light, and she can still shove it when she is making a point, but it no longer travels.
BOOTEELY Tilted Stainless Steel Cat Bowl with Stand
$13.65
The square metre we didn’t have
The window hammock with suction cups, about $17, is a woven hammock on a frame that sticks to the glass with suction cups. Our one sunny window is above the sofa and had no sill; the hammock gave her a shelf in the sun that takes up no floor at all, and in a flat this size that is the only kind of space there is. Clean the glass with alcohol before fitting and press the cups again after a week; ours loosened when the weather turned and we found her, unbothered, on the sofa underneath.
Window Hammock with Suction Cups
$17.05
The clippers for the needles
The small pet nail clippers with safety guard, about $9, are scissor-style clippers with a stop that only lets the very tip through. By day six our ankles and the sofa cushions had a pattern of small holes in them, and the shelter had said trimming the points was fine from eight weeks. One claw per evening, with the other of us holding the bird toy, and within a week the holes stopped. They are kitten-sized and she will need a bigger pair in a year.
Small Pet Nail Clippers with Safety Guard
$8.69
On the seventh night she got into the cave bed by herself, in the spot by the window where she had dragged it, and purred loud enough to hear from the kitchen. The flat is still forty square metres. It feels like it has a room more.
What we’d leave at home
Everything in this story
Soft Cotton Pet Sling Carrier with Safety Hook
$31.19
Cat-Eared Plush Cave Bed
$11.79
Double-Layer Honeycomb Cat Litter Mat
$12.39
Self-Adhesive Sofa Scratch Guard (60 x 200 cm roll)
$18.15
Squeaky Bird Teaser on Elastic Cord
$18.79
Motion-Activated Hide-and-Seek Feather Toy
$8.55
ROJECO Stainless Steel Pet Water Fountain
$26.49
BOOTEELY Tilted Stainless Steel Cat Bowl with Stand
$13.65
Window Hammock with Suction Cups
$17.05
Small Pet Nail Clippers with Safety Guard
$8.69
Everything here comes to about $167. Prices in USD; they move a little from week to week.
Frequently asked questions
What do I need before bringing a kitten home to a flat?
A way to carry it, a litter tray with a mat under it, something it is allowed to scratch, and water it will actually drink. Food bowls and toys can arrive in the first few days. Our full kit for a 40-square-metre flat came to about $167; the four essentials were about $88.
Is cheap kitten gear good enough?
For the first year, yes, and most of it is outgrown by then anyway. The kit in this story is the inexpensive version of everything, and the only item we would upgrade is the carrier, if we ever had to fly. Spend on the scratch guard and the fountain; those two protect the sofa and the kidneys.
How do I stop a kitten scratching the sofa in a small flat?
Give the kitten something better to scratch in the exact place it already scratches, not across the room. We wrapped the armrest she had chosen in a self-adhesive scratch guard and she kept using the same spot — on the guard. A separate post two metres away was ignored.
How do I get a kitten to drink more water?
Move the water away from the food and make it move. Our kitten ignored a bowl beside her dish for two days and drank from a stainless fountain in the hallway within an hour of it being switched on. Cats are drawn to running water and dislike drinking where they eat.
Where does the litter tray go in a small flat?
The least-used corner you can get to without moving furniture, with a litter mat in front of it. Ours is beside the washing machine. The mat matters more than the tray: it is the difference between litter in one place and litter in the bed.