Learn how to care for your new kitten.

Like all pets, kittens need proper care to keep them healthy. Caring for a new kitten requires home care as well as veterinary care.

Providing the Right Diet is Essential in Caring for a New Kitten

Feeding your kitten properly will ensure that your kitten gets all the right nutrients to grow and mature normally. The food ideally should be a diet that is formulated for a growing kitten.

Kittens, just like people, have likes and dislikes and it is important to choose a food that your kitten will eat readily. While there are advantages to feeding both dry and canned foods, it may be advantageous to feed a combination of both so that your cat will be more likely to accept a specialized diet in the event that a dietary change becomes necessary in the future.

Feeding home cooked meals to kittens is not generally advisable because it can be difficult to achieve the proper balance of nutrients and a lack of nutrients in the diet can lead to dietary deficiencies and severe illness.

Once weaned and eating solid foods, your kitten no longer needs to drink milk. However, fresh water should be available at all times.

A Physical Examination Should be Performed for Your New Kitten

A physical examination, performed by your veterinarian, will check your kitten for adequate body condition, external parasites (such as ear mites, fleas and ticks), congenital defects, evidence of infectious diseases and general overall health.

All Kittens Need Vaccinations to Ensure Health

Your new kitten should be vaccinated as early as 6-8 weeks of age. Vaccinations against feline panleukopenia (sometimes called feline distemper), feline calicivirus, feline rhinotracheitis (or feline herpesvirus), and rabies are recommended for almost all kittens. Rabies vaccination is mandated by law in most communities. There may be other vaccinations, such as feline leukemia, that may be recommended by your veterinarian as well.

Fecal Examinations and Deworming for Kitten Health

A fecal examination will check your kitten for evidence of intestinal parasites such as roundworms, hookworms, tapeworms, coccidia and Giardia. Roundworms and hookworms are common in kittens and many kittens are born with them. Because these parasites also have some potential for spread to people, particularly children, it is usually recommended that kittens be routinely dewormed for these parasites at an early age.

Care for Your Kitten by Testing for Feline Leukemia and Feline AIDS

Both feline leukemia and feline AIDS are viral diseases that can be passed from one cat to another. Both viruses can be passed from the mother cat to her kittens before birth. It is recommended that all kittens be tested for these viruses so that their status for the viruses is known. While a positive test, particularly for feline AIDS, in a young kitten can indicate that antibodies from the mother are present rather than being a true infection, a negative test is generally considered reliable, even in a young kitten. Many of the current tests available test for both viruses at the same time and at least one test also checks for heartworms, although a heartworm test is unlikely to be positive in a young kitten.

Protect Your Kitten Against Parasites

Your new kitten needs to be protected against parasites such as fleas and heartworms. There are numerous options available to accomplish this. Discuss with your veterinarian which product is safest and most effective for your pet. The choice will depend on your kitten’s anticipated lifestyle and what parasites your kitten is likely to encounter.

Spay or Neuter Your Kitten to Promote Health and Well-Being

Spaying or neutering is advisable for all cats. Discuss with your veterinarian what age is preferable for performing the surgery. In some settings, kittens are spayed or neutered at a very young age, as early as 6-8 weeks. At our hospital, we prefer to wait until 4 months of age. Female cats benefit from being spayed prior to the first heat cycle, which may occur any time after 6 months of age.

Provide Environmental Enrichment for Your Kitten

Providing environmental enrichment in the form of perches, hiding places, toys and scratching posts can help your kitten adjust to his new home and help avoid behavioral problems. In addition, proper management of litter boxes as well as feeding and watering stations is critical for your new kitten.

Following these simple procedures can help keep your new kitten healthy and happy and ensure that he grows into a well-adjusted adult cat free of feline diseases and parasites.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 2:34 am and is filed under Cat Behavior and Training, Cat Care, Cats, Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.