Are you considering adopting a new cat? Most households in the United States have at least one pet. Whether you’re going to be a first-time pet owner or you already have a few dogs or cats at home, adopting a new cat can be an exciting and rewarding experience.

But as with most things, there are some critical preparations you should make before bringing home a new feline friend. Some of these are ideas you and your family should consider before adopting, and others are mindset adjustments for happy, healthy pet ownership. On the more practical side of things, there are lots of factors you should consider when preparing your home for another pet. Wherever you are in your adoption journey, this handy guide for adopting a new cat has you covered. Keep reading to learn more!

Before Adopting

In this article, we’ll discuss some key things you should think about before committing to adopting a new cat, as well as essential ways to prepare your home for your new family member. First, let’s briefly go over the reasons why adopting a cat is a great idea.

Reasons for Adopting a New Cat

Since you’re reading this article, chances are you don’t need any more convincing that cat adoption is a good idea. But getting a new pet comes with plenty of challenges and responsibilities, as we’ll be discussing, so it might help to think about the benefits first.

Pet adoption provides a tremendous service to society, especially to animals. Countless animals are dropped off at, or discovered by, animal shelters across the country. While some people assume that shelter cats and dogs must have something wrong with them, most of these critters would make excellent pets. The only reasons they end up at shelters are usually that their previous owners weren’t able to care for them, or simply didn’t care enough to try. Others show up at shelters because they never had any home to begin with, such as feral kittens, but would still make loving pets if adopted soon enough.

Unfortunately, too few animals actually get the happy homes they deserve. Although good animal shelters take great care of the pets they get and try to find them homes, many dogs and cats end up being euthanized simply because there are too many of them.

While you shouldn’t take on the responsibility of caring for pets unless you’re well prepared for it, doing so can literally make the world a better place. Let’s talk about what to do before adopting a new cat.

Make Sure the Whole Family is On Board

The first step to adopting a new pet is to make sure your whole family is prepared and excited for the adoption. If your partner isn’t on board, try to gently convince them without nagging them. Help them see how having a pet would make life better and more enjoyable for all of you, in addition to providing a home to a deserving animal. If you have older children who will share in the responsibilities of pet care, make sure they’re aware of the challenges and prepared to do their part.

Consider Getting Two Cats

Cats need a lot of playtime and interaction to be as happy and healthy as possible. If you and your family aren’t at home very much, you might want to get two cats so they can keep each other company. That way, while you’re at work and the kids are at preschool, you can rest assured your furry little friends won’t get bored.

Choose the Right Shelter to Adopt From

As any animal rights activist can tell you, animal shelters aren’t all created equal. Before looking at cats to adopt, visit the shelters in your area in person to get a feel for how well they care for the animals. If you notice some animals don’t look healthy, ask one of the staff members about it, and gauge their reaction. If a shelter doesn’t do behavioral assessments or disease testing on animals, you should go somewhere else to adopt. As sad as it is to leave those needy animals, you have to remember that your first responsibility is to your family. Even minor illnesses can be devastating if not recognized. Introducing a sick cat into your home without realizing it could spell trouble for your family.

Make Sure Your House is Safe

After finding a shelter in your area you’re comfortable adopting from, you need to check around your home and make sure it’s cat-ready. First of all, ensure you have easy ways of keeping your cat from getting out where it shouldn’t. You should have one room with a secure door that you can dedicate to your cat as a “sanctuary room” for a little while. Keep in mind that if your cat accidentally gets outside, it won’t know where it lives and could easily get lost. For that reason, windows with broken or loose screens can be a problem, especially if you often leave them open.

Kittens love to chew on things, and cats of any age might do it if they’re stressed. Make sure there aren’t any dangling lines or electric extension cords where your cat could reach them. If you’re in need of any home repairs, now would be a great time to get those taken care of. Perhaps you need to repair a leaky roof or have an appliance fixed.

Protect Furniture and Carpets

Fully furnished apartments are wonderfully convenient, but it’s important to remember that cats can wreak havoc on rugs and furniture. This mostly applies to upholstered chairs, couches, and low-hanging curtains and table cloths. If you have rented any furniture, you should consider using covers to protect them, or at least make sure you’re paying attention any time your cat gets near them for the first few months. If you have any antique, heirloom, or custom-made furnishings that are special to you, you might want to consider storing them somewhere else for the first couple of months after adoption. But even if something does get broken, businesses such as Oriental rug repair services can make repairs to most things.

Determine a Sanctuary Room

Before adopting a new cat, it’s important to know where it’s going to live. If you’re like most pet owners, you’ll probably let your cat roam around the house, but when you first bring it home, it needs a secluded place to be by itself. This isn’t in any way to punish or isolate your cat — it’s just so it has a place to go when it wants to be alone, and a place where it can start to get comfortable with its new home. Cats naturally tend to keep to themselves, and if you set it loose to roam around your entire house on the first day, it will probably become overwhelmed and frightened. Letting it have one room all to itself for a few days will help it come to terms with its new environment, as well as its new family.

Wherever you let your cat live, make sure it’s a well-ventilated room without clutter or excessive dirt or dust. It should be clean, and ideally empty. A storage room isn’t the best place to use, because it would offer too many places to hide and may make it difficult to find your cat if you need to catch it for some reason. Make sure your air conditioner or heating systems reach the room so it has adequate temperature control. If your central air system tends to be unreliable, you should get HVAC repairs so that your pet is always kept safely comfortable, especially when you’re not home.

Determine Off-Limits Places

Just as important as selecting a special room for your cat is defining where it shouldn’t ever go. If you have very small children, their bedrooms should probably be off-limits, especially at night. You may want to keep your cat out of everyone’s bedrooms, period, simply because they can make restless nighttime companions. As appealing as it sounds to fall asleep with your furry little one purring beside you, you’ll be setting yourself up for interrupted sleep, as cats tend to wake up and move around at night — and they’re not above stepping on or over your face while they’re at it.

Other areas of your home should be off-limits simply because they aren’t safe for your cat. For example, if you do any sort of manual labor or small contraction projects in the garage, you should probably keep the cat out of there. The workshop is for air compressor parts and power tools, not for cats!

On that note, you might want to do any outdoor renovations you’ve been putting off before transitioning to cat ownership, as well. Garage floor sealing companies can go a long way towards improving your home living experience.

Make Sure the Yard is Cat-Friendly

If you live in the city, letting your new cat outside probably isn’t something you plan to do. Cats are small and nimble, which makes it more difficult to keep them inside fenced-in yards compared to dogs. If you do want to let your cat out regularly, make sure your yard is properly enclosed with a secure fence that cats can’t climb, dig, or claw their way out of. You should also look around your yard for common-sense dangers, such as dangling electric cords.

As a side note, even if you plan to let your cat outside eventually, you probably shouldn’t do it within the first few months of owning it. Unless you’re outside as well and keeping a careful eye on it, it’s best to keep the kitty indoors for a while.

Even if your cat has no chance to squeeze outside your yard and escape, the plants in your yard themselves might pose a danger to your pet. This may come as some surprise, but there are several common household plants that are toxic to pets. These include the following plants:

• Lilies
• Tulips
• Marijuana
• Sago palm
• Azalea, or rhododendron
• Oleander
• Castor bean
• Cyclamen
• Kalanchoe
• Yew
• Amaryllis
• Autumn crocus
• Chrysanthemum
• English ivy
• Peace lily
• Pothos
• Schefflera

If any of these plant names sound familiar to you, you might want to research them and see if you can identify them in your yard. Chrysanthemums (also called mums for short), tulips, and lilies are particularly common lawn plants.

Before adopting a new cat, look over the shrubs and bushes around your yard and make sure they’re safe for having a pet, especially if you plan to let your cat outdoors.

Buy the Right Food and Supplies

Now we get to the first fun part of adopting a new cat: buying all the stuff you’ll need!

The most obvious necessity is cat food, but your cat adoption shopping list goes quite a bit farther than that. You’ll also need food and water dishes, a scratching post, some toys to keep your cat occupied, and at least one uncovered litter box (two is better, and if you’re getting more than one cat, you should have one litter box per cat, plus one extra).

You can do some research to determine what kinds of food are healthiest for cats and still within your price range. But an even better idea is to ask the shelter you’re adopting from what brand of cat food they use. This way you can make at least one thing about your cat’s new life familiar at the start: their preferred brand of food.

Lay Some Ground Rules

Once you’re ready to go out and adopt your new cat, it’s time to have a discussion with your family about what to expect, and how you’re going to welcome your new resident. If you have young children, they’re going to be incredibly excited when you bring the cat home, but it’s important to let them know that too much excitement on the first day can scare the kitty. Even if you adopt an older, laid-back cat (which would be great, because senior cats typically have trouble finding homes), it will still be uneasy about moving into an unfamiliar place. Try to help your kids understand what will be going through their kitty’s mind before adopting a new cat.

While you’re at it, make a rough plan for how you will all behave around the new cat, and what you will do when you get it home. Make sure everyone knows not to make any loud noises or sudden movements around the kitty for the first few days, especially if it’s a young kitten. Plan to give everyone a chance to meet the cat and bond with it one-on-one after it’s had time to acclimate to the home. Since cats are territorial, it will be overwhelmed and frightened if you set it loose on the entire house at once, so again, plan to let it out in the “cat sanctuary” before inviting it into the rest of the house to play. Finally, remind your family to let the cat lead in the acclimation process. Children will be excited to play with the kitten, but the cat should be allowed to decide when it’s ready to play. Don’t let anyone force themselves on it.

With all of that information under your belt, you should be more than ready for adopting a new cat. Hopefully you’ll enjoy years of beautiful experiences and fond memories with your new pet!

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