Skip to main content

Newsroom

November 6, 2021

A Complete Checklist for Kitten Proofing Your Home

byElsa Smith

A Complete Checklist for Kitten Proofing Your Home

Are you a new kitten owner? Or do you look forward to adopting one? Congratulations! Kittens are cute, cuddly, and fun to hang out with. But adopting a kitten also means that you are responsible and caring. Apart from the regular feeding and grooming, you should adjust your life and home to accommodate your new fur baby and her queer behaviors. We call this kitten-proofing your home.

Here is a checklist of the changes you can make to your lifestyle and home. 

Adjust your budget - you have a new member in the family

Owning a kitten requires more resources than the purchase or adoption costs. You should adjust your budget long before the kitty arrives. Make provisions for your fur baby’s food, healthcare, toys, accessories, and other stuff she might need. 

If this is your first kitty, consider adopting one rather than buying from a pet shop.

Why is adjusting your budget crucial?

Some kitten behaviors such as foraging from garbage bins and playing with your clothes result from owner neglect. So, adjust your budget to accommodate your kitty's needs. 

Adjust your schedule - she needs you (and you need her)

Gone are the days when people kept kittens and cats solely to chase mice and other rodents. Today, kittens are companions, not utility animals. And that means they deserve your time and personal attention. So adjust your schedule and make time for your kitty. 

How does it help to kitten-proof your home?

Spending time with your kitty helps you understand her. You will know what she likes and other behaviors. You will get crucial tips on how to adjust your home to meet her needs and avoid conflict. Spending time with your kitty also helps to exercise her mind and limbs - it helps to ward off undesirable kitten behavior. 

Adjust your home - your kitten needs some space

Whenever someone mentions kitten-proofing your home, many people think about blocking access and making life hard for the kitty. But as you have read, there is more to it than just erecting barricades and locking stuff away. The following changes to your living space will help you and your cat adjust to each other’s presence. 

Keep the home clean and tidy

There is a reason why we say “curiosity killed the cat.” Cats are instinctively curious animals and will explore anything and everything within their environment. Kittens are even more curious than adult cats because they want to know more about their world. 

As LOLcats explain, “Your kitten will be curious about loose cables, dangling blinder cords, open closets, clothes lying on the floor, garbage on the floor, and other items. Kittens could choke or swallow something dangerous like rubber bands or plastic wrap. So keep your home clean and tidy at all times.” 

Keep unauthorized areas inaccessible

Keeping the home clean and tidy at all times could be a stretch for many people. If that is you, you can go around it a different way. Restrict access to sections of the house. For example, if you like to keep your closet open, consider locking your bedroom door, and take steps to stop your cat from scratching the doors.

The following tips will help to keep your kitty safe:

  • Keep toilet lids closed and locked at all times. A curious kitten can fall in and drown. 
  • Always have the garbage can with the lid. A curious kitten can swallow something harmful. 
  • Keep the refrigerator locked. Cats learn by watching. Your kitty could learn how to open the refrigerator door and get in and freeze.
  • Put a pet-gate across open stairways. Your kitten could attempt to go up the stairs and stumble and fall.

Remove anything that could potentially harm the kitty

Although you consider your home to be safe, there are plenty of items that could harm your kitty. Remove such items before letting your kitty run free across the room.

You can begin by stowing away any dangling electrical cords and pulling up any hanging blinder chords.

Watch out for the following items that could harm your kitty:

 

  • Rubber bands or plastic wrap.
  • Packaging peanuts and styrofoam. 
  • Detergents and other household chemicals. 
  • Indoor plants that could be toxic to your kitten.
  • Instruments for your needlework.
  •  

Purchase and install crucial cat furniture and equipment

Now that your home is safer for your kitten, make it more comfortable for her. Purchase and set up cat furniture, equipment, and recreation items. The following are must-haves:

 

  • A clean litter box and flushable cat litter. 
  • Scratch posts.
  • Enrichment toys. 
  • Cat shelves and perches. (not too high though, she is just a kitty)

A final word - kitten-proofing starts in the kitty’s mind 

This checklist will help you to kitten-proof your home. But it is incomplete if it is without working on your kitten’s mind. Enrichment activities will keep your kitten’s mind busy and her body active. They go a long way in kitten-proofing your home. Activities such as playing with puzzle toys, hunting games, and exercise will keep your kitty’s mind and body active and away from destructive or undesirable behavior. Also, ensure your kitten is spayed or neutered. Fixing the kitty stops hormone-driven destructive behaviors and keeps your home safe for your kitty and comfortable for you. 




 

2023 Year End Numbers

  • Animals Adopted

    787

  • Animals Transferred

    268

  • Pets Returned Home

    283

  • Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate, Return (TNVR)

    776

© 2024 SPCA of Luzerne County
Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

  1. What Information Do We Collect? When you visit our website you may provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected on an individual basis and website use information collected on an aggregate basis as you and others browse our website.
  2. Personal Information You Choose to Provide We may request that you voluntarily supply us with personal information, including your email address, postal address, home or work telephone number and other personal information for such purposes as correspondence, placing an order, requesting an estimate, or participating in online surveys. If you choose to correspond with us through email, we may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses. We provide the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received by mail and telephone.
  3. Website Use Information Similar to other websites, our site may utilize a standard technology called "cookies" (see explanation below, "What Are Cookies?") and web server logs to collect information about how our website is used. Information gathered through cookies and server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our website, and the sites visited just before and just after ours. This information is collected on an aggregate basis. None of this information is associated with you as an individual.
  4. How Do We Use the Information That You Provide to Us? Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our business activities, providing service and support and making available other products and services to our customers and prospective customers. Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. The lists used to send you product and service offers are developed and managed under our traditional standards designed to safeguard the security and privacy of all personal information provided by our users. You may at any time to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers.
  5. What Are Cookies? Cookies are a feature of web browser software that allows web servers to recognize the computer used to access a website. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored by a user's web browser on the user's hard drive. Cookies can remember what information a user accesses on one web page to simplify subsequent interactions with that website by the same user or to use the information to streamline the user's transactions on related web pages. This makes it easier for a user to move from web page to web page and to complete commercial transactions over the Internet. Cookies should make your online experience easier and more personalized.
  6. How Do We Use Information Collected From Cookies? We use website browser software tools such as cookies and web server logs to gather information about our website users' browsing activities, in order to constantly improve our website and better serve our users. This information assists us to design and arrange our web pages in the most user-friendly manner and to continually improve our website to better meet the needs of our users and prospective users. Cookies help us collect important business and technical statistics. The information in the cookies lets us trace the paths followed by users to our website as they move from one page to another. Web server logs allow us to count how many people visit our website and evaluate our website's visitor capacity. We do not use these technologies to capture your individual email address or any personally identifying information about you.
  7. Notice of New Services and Changes Occasionally, we may use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. As a user of our website, you will be given the opportunity to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers by clicking on a response box when you receive such an offer or by sending us an email request.
  8. How Do We Secure Information Transmissions? When you send confidential personal information to us on our website, a secure server software which we have licensed encrypts all information you input before it is sent to us. The information is scrambled en route and decoded once it reaches our website. Other email that you may send to us may not be secure unless we advise you that security measures will be in place prior to your transmitting the information. For that reason, we ask that you do not send confidential information such as Social Security, credit card, or account numbers to us through an unsecured email.
  9. How Do We Protect Your Information? Information Security -- We utilize encryption/security software to safeguard the confidentiality of personal information we collect from unauthorized access or disclosure and accidental loss, alteration or destruction. Evaluation of Information Protection Practices -- Periodically, our operations and business practices are reviewed for compliance with organization policies and procedures governing the security, confidentiality and quality of our information. Employee Access, Training and Expectations -- Our organization values, ethical standards, policies and practices are committed to the protection of user information. In general, our business practices limit employee access to confidential information, and limit the use and disclosure of such information to authorized persons, processes and transactions.
  10. How Can You Access and Correct Your Information? You may request access to all your personally identifiable information that we collect online and maintain in our database by emailing us using the contact form provided to you within the site structure of our website.
  11. Do We Disclose Information to Outside Parties? We may provide aggregate information about our customers, sales, website traffic patterns and related website information to our affiliates or reputable third parties, but this information will not include personally identifying data, except as otherwise provided in this privacy policy.
  12. What About Legally Compelled Disclosure of Information? We may disclose information when legally compelled to do so, in other words, when we, in good faith, believe that the law requires it or for the protection of our legal rights.
  13. Permission to Use of Materials The right to download and store or output the materials in our website is granted for the user's personal use only, and materials may not be reproduced in any edited form. Any other reproduction, transmission, performance, display or editing of these materials by any means mechanical or electronic without our express written permission is strictly prohibited. Users wishing to obtain permission to reprint or reproduce any materials appearing on this site may contact us directly.
Terms & Conditions

Terms & Conditions

Donation Refund Policy

We are grateful for your donation and support of our organization. If you have made an error in making your donation or change your mind about contributing to our organization please contact us. Refunds are returned using the original method of payment. If you made your donation by credit card, your refund will be credited to that same credit card.

Automated Recurring Donation Cancellation

Ongoing support is important to enabling projects to continue their work, so we encourage donors to continue to contribute to projects over time. But if you must cancel your recurring donation, please notify us.

Powered by Firespring