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One of the biggest complaints that I get with the kittens at NoVa Cat is that I don’t let them go home early enough. Well, there is a reason to it, a really good one! It boils down to making sure you go home with a super sweet, well adjusted CAT, not a BRAT!
The “prime” time for socializing kittens and molding them into who they can be starts around 5 weeks old when they really start to pay attention to their surroundings and explore. Up until that time, all they really care about is snuggling with their buddies, eating and eliminating. From 5 weeks and beyond to around 12-14 weeks (from what I have seen over the past 2 decades raising litters of kittens) that is time their little brains take in the world and make them who they are.
This is why you never see us send you home with a kitten that is less than 9 weeks old when they are a single kitten going into a home with an older cat. It is important they have someone of their age to learn with. They take cues off of each other and work together in their surrounding. Less than 9 weeks, they are still into their environment, but they depend more on you and in the end act a bit more human- which we do not want. A good majority end up with attitude problems simply because they don’t think they are 100% cat. They are a human that happens to look like a cat and how dare you think differently of them! Ten to twelve weeks of age is the best time to get a kitten. They have been socialized well by that point in time.
My current situation with the latest batch of kittens are semi-feral. Which means they were not introduced to people early in life and therefore there is no trust, so we need to get them to learn that we are OK. They are safe, and they will be kept warm and will be fed. The longer during that prime socialization period they are not introduced and exposed to people and being handled, the less likely they will turn out to be the lap cat everyone wants. Trust levels go down, and they will be hard wired into a feral cat. They tolerate people around them, they depend upon care, but they really are not interested in sharing their world with you. So patience is paramount with these guys!
Four (6 week old) babies came in last week hissing and spitting and carrying on like we were going to toss them in a sack and into a river. Instead they got cleaned up, they got their vaccines, a felv/fiv test, dewormed and plunked into a cubical with soft beds, and lots of food (food builds trust.) Hey! Not so bad! Within two days we had two kittens purring and accepting to being handled. The other two, not so much- we had our work cut out for us. Especially if they were hissing and wanting to bite. That’s all I needed was a kitten biting a staff member or a client. The last thing I wanted was to deal with animal control over a feral kitten bite (it does not end well for the feral cat.)
We moved the new set to the kitten playpen downstairs to be exposed to the current set of kittens. This way they can watch them play and see that it is not so bad being here! Two kittens were allowed to play right away with the new bunch, but the two white ones had to remain in the playpen to watch only. Reprogramming these two was going to take some time. During the day the staff would unzip the pen and pet and handle the two kittens while they hissed and howled and carried on as if we were going to take them to meet their immanent doom while horrified clients looked on at their behavior. How could a kitten possibly act like that! Kittens are supposed to be soft and cuddly and smell like rainbows and chocolate.
Two days later one of the white kittens decided we were OK and she wanted to come out to play, and we allowed it. She is easily handled now with minimal melt-downs. We are still working on Jonathan ( our white kitten with a grey spot on his head.) He is adjusting, but slowly. Hopefully in a week or so, we can have him out and about bouncing around with the rest of the gang in the main lobby without worrying he will hide up inside the couch or bite/scratch someone.
So be patient with us when we won’t allow a new kitten to go home right away. We want to make sure you get the best kitten you can get!