Your Rescue Cat's First Week

Because it is a cat that has just had its entire world replaced, and hiding is how cats handle that. This is the single most common worry from new adopters and it is almost never a problem. A cat that hides for the first few days is regulating itself sensibly, not rejecting you. What matters is not whether it hides but whether it eats, drinks and uses the litter box, and most do that overnight while the house is quiet. Give it a small room, resist the urge to pull it out from under the bed, and let it decide when to come out.

A rough guide to how long settling takes. Three days for the initial fear to ease, three weeks for the cat to learn the routine and start behaving normally, and three months for it to genuinely feel at home and show you who it actually is. It is not a schedule and plenty of cats run faster or slower. Its real value is managing expectations. Adopters who know the timeline stop panicking on day four, and cats settle better in a household that is not anxiously hovering over them.

Pick the quietest small room you have, ideally a spare bedroom or a bathroom rather than an open-plan space. Put food and water at one end and the litter box at the other, since cats do not like eating beside their toilet. Add a hiding place such as a cardboard box on its side or a covered bed, because a cat with a hiding spot relaxes faster than one with nowhere to go. Keep the door shut, close off gaps behind appliances, and let the cat own that room completely before offering the rest of the house.

No, and this catches out well-meaning people constantly. Ask the shelter or foster what the cat has been eating and buy that first, even if you plan to switch. A sudden food change on top of the stress of moving house is a reliable way to produce diarrhoea in an animal that is already unsettled. Once the cat is eating well and settled, usually a week or two in, transition slowly over about a week by mixing increasing proportions of the new food into the old. If the cat stops eating at any point, slow down.

Use whatever the cat used before, at first. Litter texture matters more to cats than people realise, and a cat that dislikes the substrate may look for somewhere else to go, which starts a habit nobody wants in week one. Ask what the shelter used. Keep the box uncovered and larger than you think necessary, scoop daily, and place it somewhere quiet rather than beside a noisy appliance. If you want to switch later, do it gradually by mixing, and go back a step if the cat starts hesitating at the box.

Within the first week or two, once the cat has settled enough to travel without falling apart. Register with a clinic early rather than waiting until something is wrong, because a practice that already has your cat on file is far easier to reach in a hurry. Bring whatever paperwork the shelter gave you. If your cat came from City Humane Services, remember its adoption fee does not include spay or neuter surgery, so that conversation belongs in this first appointment too.

Straining in the litter box without producing urine is the one to memorise, particularly in a male cat. That can be a urinary blockage, it is life-threatening within hours rather than days, and it needs emergency veterinary care immediately rather than a wait-and-see night. Also treat as urgent: repeated vomiting, laboured or open-mouthed breathing, collapse, a swollen painful abdomen, complete refusal of food for more than 24 hours, or a suspected poisoning. Do not attempt home remedies and never give human medication to a cat. Phone a vet first.

The Veterinary Specialty Centre of NL on Topsail Road in Mount Pearl handles emergencies, and their exam starts at $262 plus HST before treatment. Know their hours in advance, because coverage here has a real gap. They run 24 hours Monday through Thursday, close Friday morning, remain closed Saturday and reopen Sunday evening. Local day clinics are generally closed at weekends as well. Save the number in your phone the day you bring the cat home rather than looking it up at eleven at night with a sick animal in a carrier.

Yes, and it will surprise you if you have owned cats elsewhere. The City of St. John's requires residents to licence pets, and a cat licence costs $15, the same as a dog. Buy or renew online, email a completed form to humaneservices@stjohns.ca, or drop a form at City Hall on New Gower Street, at Humane Services on Higgins Line, or at the Mews or Paul Reynolds community centres. Do it in the first couple of weeks alongside confirming the microchip details are registered to you rather than the shelter.

Slowly, through a closed door, and slower than you want to. The new cat stays in its safe room for at least the first week while both cats get used to each other by smell alone. Swap bedding between them so each learns the other's scent. Feed them on opposite sides of the closed door so proximity predicts something good. Only then try brief supervised visual contact, and separate before anyone gets upset. Rushing this is the most common cause of a resident-cat relationship that never recovers.

Stop trying, and let the cat come to you instead. Sit in the room doing something boring, reading or working, without looking directly at it. Direct eye contact reads as a threat to a nervous cat. Use a wand toy so interaction happens at a distance that feels safe, and put treats near you rather than in your hand at first. Most cats close that gap on their own within a few weeks. Cats that were undersocialised or lived outdoors take longer, and a small number stay reserved permanently.

Mildly worried on day one, seriously worried after 24 hours. Some newly adopted cats eat nothing the first evening and then eat overnight when the house is dark and quiet, so check the bowl in the morning before assuming. Warming wet food slightly makes it smell stronger and often helps. But a cat that genuinely eats nothing for more than about 24 hours needs veterinary attention rather than more coaxing, because prolonged fasting in cats can cause serious liver problems. This is not a wait-until-Monday situation.

Less than the shop will sell you. A carrier, a litter box, the same litter the shelter used, the same food the shelter fed, bowls, a scratching post and a wand toy. That genuinely covers week one. The carrier is not optional since shelters will not hand over a loose cat. Hold off on the expensive cat tree until you know what this particular animal likes, because a surprising number ignore an elaborate tower and sleep in the box it arrived in. Our cost guide breaks down what the first year actually runs.