Your Rescue Cat's First Week

Longer than most people expect, and the rough shape is three days, three weeks, three months. The first three days are usually hiding and very little eating. By three weeks the cat has learned the routine and started testing the space. By three months you are seeing the actual personality, which is often noticeably different from the cat you met at the shelter. Nervous cats and cats that came out of colony situations can take longer still. Nothing about a slow start predicts a bad outcome.

Completely normal, and it is the single most common worry in the first week. A cat that has just been moved has lost every familiar smell, sound and surface at once, so hiding is a sensible response rather than a problem. Leave food, water and a litter box in the room and let the cat come out on its own schedule, usually at night at first. Do not pull a cat out from under a bed. That teaches the cat that hiding does not work and that you are the reason, which sets you back a week.

One closed room, ideally a spare bedroom or a quiet bathroom, holding everything the cat needs for the first few days. Litter box in one corner, food and water away from it, two hiding options, a scratching post and the carrier left open. The point is that a whole house is overwhelming to a cat that does not yet know where anything is or where it can escape to. Restricting the space actually speeds settling up. Open the rest of the house one room at a time once the cat is eating and using the box reliably.

Slowly, over seven to ten days, and not in the first week if you can help it. Ask the rescue what the cat has been eating and buy that brand before pickup. Once the cat is settled, mix a small amount of the new food into the old and increase the proportion gradually. Changing diet abruptly on top of the stress of a move is the standard way to end up with diarrhoea and a cat that then avoids the litter box, which turns one problem into two.

Not at the same time, and preferably not for a few weeks. Use whatever litter the rescue or foster used and change it later if you want to, one gradual step at a time. A cat that dislikes a new substrate under its feet in an unfamiliar house will find somewhere else to go, and once a cat has picked a corner of the carpet it is much harder to undo. One box per cat plus one spare is the standard, scooped daily.

Within the first week or two, even when the rescue has completed everything. The visit is not really about medicine, it is about registering with a clinic and having a relationship before you need one at 9 p.m. on a Sunday. Bring the paperwork the rescue gave you so the vet can see what vaccines and treatments are already done and when boosters are due. Kingston has plenty of family clinics, and it is worth asking new-client wait times when you call, since some practices book weeks out.

Go tonight if a male cat is straining in the litter box and producing little or nothing, because urinary blockage is a life-threatening emergency measured in hours rather than days. Also urgent: open-mouth or laboured breathing, repeated vomiting, complete refusal to eat for 24 hours or more, obvious trauma, seizures, or a swollen painful abdomen. After hours, Kingston Regional Pet Hospital on Midland Avenue handles emergencies at 613-634-5370. When you are unsure, phoning a clinic costs nothing and waiting can cost everything.

A little reduced appetite in the first day or two is expected. A cat that eats nothing at all for more than about 24 hours needs veterinary attention rather than patience, because cats develop liver problems from not eating far faster than dogs do. Try warming wet food slightly to raise the smell, offering it in a quiet spot rather than a busy kitchen, and leaving the room while the cat eats. If none of that produces food going in by the end of day one, phone your vet.

Through a closed door, and slower than feels necessary. Keep the new cat in the safe room for at least the first week and feed both cats on either side of that door so they associate each other with something good. Swap bedding between them so each learns the other's scent before ever seeing them. Then try short supervised visual contact, then brief supervised time together. Hissing and posturing are normal early. Sustained fighting means back up a stage rather than pushing on.

Assume it will try, because a cat that recently arrived has no reason yet to think of your house as home. Keep the safe room door closed while people come and go, and get everyone in the household into the habit of checking behind them. A microchip registered to your current phone number is the single most useful precaution, and Kingston requires a cat licence in the urban area anyway. If the cat does get out, search close to the house at dawn and dusk and look low and under porches rather than up.

Whenever it decides to, and pushing accelerates nothing. Some cats climb into a lap on day two. Others take three months and then never leave. The reliable way to speed it up is to be boring and predictable, feed on a schedule, play with a wand toy daily, and let the cat approach you rather than reaching for it. Sitting in the room doing something else entirely is remarkably effective. Attention offered rather than demanded is the whole trick with a nervous cat.

It works better than people assume, particularly with a bonded pair or two cats that already know each other. They settle faster because they have each other as a familiar element in an unfamiliar house, and they entertain each other during a long Eastern Ontario winter when nobody is going outside much. Two strangers introduced at the same time is a harder project. If you want two cats, ask Kingston rescues about pairs they are placing together rather than picking two unrelated cats yourself.