Our Newest Family Member

On July 10, 2008 Ben and I brought home our newest family member, a tiger calico kitten named Daisy. Ben had cats growing up, but I was a new cat owner so I wanted to do my research before we brought Daisy home. We had been discussing getting a kitten for two months, and during this time I read two books about having cats and kittens as pets. I wanted to make sure I was fully prepared (or prepared as I could be) to share my home with a new animal companion! The two books that I read were wonderfully informative, and had a lot of duplicate information, but I am glad that I read both of them since they had two different perspectives. The book titles were, The Everything Cat Book
and Cats for Dumbies which were both great reads! The books really helped me get prepared for bringing Daisy home.

The night before we brought her home, Ben and I went to the pet store to get a few of the essentials (litter box, litter, Iams kitten dry food and a couple of cans of Iams wet kitten food and a few toys that we thought she might like).

Another important thing we did for the kitten was set up a safe room. We decided that our bathroom would be her safe room, because it was easy to take everything out of the room that she could hurt herself on. We're lucky because our bathroom is very spacious, and we have a large window that she likes to look out onto the world by - it's also a good thing because it provides a nice breeze and can keep the room cool.

Daisy adjusted quickly to our home. There are always a few difficult obstacles when you bring a new kitten home.


Now we are in the process of letting her explore more rooms in the house. At first (the first couple of days that she was new in our home) we limited her to the living room and bathroom while we were all getting used to each other. After a couple of days (and some cat proofing between the refrigerator, oven, and washer and dryer - these were places that she would get stuck and not know what to do and places that she could get hurt!) we opened up the kitchen to her exploring. She has done very well in not challenging the areas she is not supposed to go to (i.e. behind the washer!)

After a couple of weeks we have opened up the loft area to Daisy. Ben worked hard in cleaning up the space so there weren't areas that she could get trapped in or any glass objects that she could break. That is one thing about having a new kitten - once they can, they love climbing and exploring. If you have a vase or anything breakable on a shelf, be sure that the kitten will not be able to reach it, or move it to a room that he or she will not be in unless she is very well looked after!

So far it's been wonderful having our kitten. I'll use this blog as a bit of a story board to report any little mishaps along the way - but so far we've been doing well.