It’s not hard to see why there’s been a big demand for pets over the last year. We’ve been stuck in our homes, isolated from friends and family, and a pandemic pet provides companionship, much-needed physical contact, play, and perhaps most importantly to some, change: a new development in your life and a sense of progress.
It’s not responsible to adopt (or buy) a pet simply for your own gratification unless you can provide it with a good home and a decent level of care. So let’s take a look at what goes into the care of one of the most popular pets in the UK – cats.
A Safe Environment
It’s well worth thinking about what will make your cat’s home safe, to spare you worries – and make sure you don’t have to deal with kitten diarrhea and vomiting after your pet eats something it shouldn’t!
Lots of common kitchen ingredients can pose a danger to cats, from the essential oils in orange peel to onions to chocolate. Try and catproof your kitchen and don’t leave toxic ingredients easily accessible to your feline friend. For some very determined cats, it’s even worth fitting child locks on your cupboards!
Outside the kitchen, one danger to be aware of are your cables. With the proliferation of devices we all use, we have more electric wires in our homes than ever, and some cats find these tempting to chew on – for some it’s their resemblance to a tail, others like the texture of the plastic insulation and for others, it’s a behaviour driven by stress. In all cases it can result in your cat ingesting plastic, which is far from ideal, or coming into contact with live current, which is worse. You can bundle wires together and run them through rigid plastic tubing to avoid temptation for your cats. Where that’s not possible, you can try painting them with a substance cats don’t like to smell or taste (anything with menthol in, for example) to put them off.
A Happy Home
It’s important to provide a home in which your cats feel safe and secure – not just for their own well being, but also because limiting your cats’ stress and anxiety also limits behaviours like chewing on wires!
In the early days, you should try and make sure your cat has somewhere safe it can retreat to while it’s still getting used to you and your home – ideally, you should provide a whole room in which it can be undisturbed. Let your cat guide you when you’re deciding when they’re ready to explore more or be more sociable – overwhelming this is bad but is so denying them mental stimulation!
Cats often like to climb, so providing vantage points around the room for them can help them to feel at home – these don’t have to be expensive climbing towers. Stable shelves, the backs of sofas and chairs can all be fertile territory for an exploring cat! Of course, if you want to limit potential damage to your furniture building or investing in a bespoke climbing structure is a good idea.