This is Ovi. It’s short for Ovidius but we just call him Ovi most of the time. Cute isn’t he? In this picture he’s currently asleep on top of my husband (who is also asleep) in our bed.

Ovi is one of the sweetest kittens I have ever had. Like most kittens he is extremely playful, very curious, and a little bit crazy but my husband and I still love him all the same.

Many of us myself included have been tempted when walking past a pet shop to just pick up the cute little kitten in the window and come right home with him/her. If only it was that simple. In fact I almost over looked that you can’t just bring a new kitten home there is some mini-preparation involved first.

In order to better help me prepare for our new family member I turned to the internet for information and found a wonderful article from about.com by Franny Syufy called Preparing for a new kitten

I am just going to highlight two topics from the article that helped me but I definately recommend reading the entire article it is full of very useful information.

The first thing Ms. Syufy speaks about in her article was kitten proofing your home. She talks about various ways to make your home safe for your kitten including getting down on the floor to their level so you can see what they see. I believe this is something very easily overlooked until you see your kitten involved in a potentially dangerous activity (i.e swallowing something that you didn’t notice was on the floor).

She then talks about the bare necessities you need to bring home a new kitty. I found this to be very helpful in me not forgetting anything when I picked Ovi up from the pet shop. Here’s a list of the products I brought home and or currently use with help from her list on the site.

1. Food- Purina Kitten Chow dry cat food and 9 Lives canned cat food. I decided to go with the food the pet store had been using and also that my previous cats when I was growing up had liked. Ovi seemed to enjoy it a great deal.
2. Bowls- Ceramic cat bowl. My husband and I decided to go with the suggestion in the article to get a ceramic bowl. We have been very satisfied it is very easy to clean and doesn’t get scratched as easily as plastic bowls do.
3. Automatic water bowl- Drinkwell Pet Fountain Reservoir Plus. We actually got this later on for our kittens. My husband and I started noticing that the kittens keep trying to drink the running water from the tub/sink. Or they would go into the tub/sink right after we finished using it to drink the water. We decided to get the Drinkwell Pet Fountain Reservoir Plus along with the Drinkwell Pet Fountain Replacement Filter Cartridges to help with this issue and it seems to have helped.
4. Cat toys- Catnip cat toy, balls, bag of assorted cat toys. We definitely spoiled him on this he has so many toys scattered all over the house.
5. Cat carrier- Petmate Kennel Cab. Don’t leave home with it. Our Petmate Kennel Cab is made out of hard plastic with hole all around very secure latches in the front. It also comes apart very easily into 3 (top piece, bottom piece, and front latch) separate pieces for cleaning.
6. Scratching post- Although we bought one Ovi doesn’t really like to use it. He seems to like our carpet better But luckily for us our carpet is made out of a material similar to his scratching post so he doesn’t do very much damage to it at this point.
7. Litter box- Van Ness Enclosed Cat Pan. The initial one we got from the pet store was quickly out grown and we decided to upgrade to the Van Ness. We definitely recommend an enclosed cat pan to an open because there is a lot less to clean off your floor when kitty decides to scrap the litter and it flies out of the box.
8. Cat pan liners- Van Ness Cat Pan Liners. If you cat has nails he/she may cut through the liner a little bit but there is still a lot less to clean as opposed to not having the liner at all. I definitely recommend a liner. Just make sure you get the proper size for your litter box.
9. Cat litter- Fresh step cat litter. We are currently using fresh step but we are finding that it isn’t containing the odors as much as we would like so we will be changing to tidy scoop cat litter once the fresh step runs out. See a later post for my thought after the change.
10. Cat bed- Ovi has a very round fluffy cat bed that he loves sleeping on when he’s not sleeping on our bed lol.
11. Bitter Apple Spray- Grannick’s Bitter Apple. This stuff works really well. Our kitties are in their “teething” stage and wanted to bite every thing. Not anymore with this stuff.
12. Vet appointment- If I hadn’t put this on the list I probably would have forgotten.