Getting a kitten isn’t just about having it to play with but also about looking after and caring for it. A kitten becomes a member of the family and will require feeding and letting outside (provided the weather outside is conducive to doing so). Below you can take a look at some of the tasks you will have to perform on a regular basis if you get a kitten.
Your new kitten will need his or her own corner of a room that is specially furnished with comfy bedding so that they can make themselves at home in their own personal space. This will be their safe spot where they will retreat to if tired. Kittens like to sleep curled up, so the area doesn’t need to be huge, but it is good to give it some sort of walling so that the kitten will feel the area is private.
Food and water are essential to sustain a kitten, so you should ensure you have the right sized food and water bowls to allow your kitten to drink from it comfortably. A litter tray is also an important item to have so that your kitten has his or her own personal bathroom, rather than using your own living space to satisfy their needs!
A scratching posts and a selection of combs or brushes are often overlooked, but are again essential caring for a kitten. A scratching post will keep the kitten’s claws in good shape so they don’t cause pain, and it will have the added benefit of reducing the scratches made on your furniture! Your kitten should be groomed on a regular basis in order to stop knots forming in the fur, but it is also a good way to check for disease-causing parasites. These parasites can be detected by having a good brush through the fur, and if any are spotted the vet can soon clear them up.
If you are considering buying a kitten, there are many places you can look. Depending on what time of kitten you want, and the age, there are three main places to look – rescue centers, general cat breeders and pedigree breeders.
If you want to do a good deed, whilst saving yourself some cash, you can pick up a kitten from your local rescue center. These centers contain cats and kittens that have been found stray or abandoned and have ended up at the rescue center to find new, loving homes. Most centers will let you take them away for free, provided that you have your cat vaccinated and sometimes sterilized. This isn’t usually a costly procedure with prices somewhere between $50 and $100.
The next option is to buy from a general cat breeder. Here you should be able to pick from a wide variety of cats from different breeds, and with different features, for a few hundred dollars. Don’t expect them to be pedigree though, as you generally pay more than this for pedigree cats, as covered below. You can find local breeders with a quick internet search, or by looking through your local directory.
Finally, if you want a ‘superior’ pet and the bragging rights to go with it, you will want a pedigree kitten. These kittens are bought from specialist breeders, who usually focus their breeding on just one species, and will come with certification that they are pure. Unfortunately these don’t come cheap. You can expect to pay anywhere from one thousand dollars for a pedigree kitten and the Guinness world record book in 2007 showed a pedigree kitten that cost $42,000. For kittens and cats that have won prestigious feline shows, you can even pay in excess of $42,000 with some breeders charging $50,000 or more for some of their best male pedigree kittens.