Bringing a kitten into your home is an exciting experience. With a new friend comes new challenges as well, and this article is here to help new cat owners adjust to the ups and downs of bringing a kitty into their lives.
Preparing for Kitty's Arrival
If it is possible, prepare a space for your new kitten before you bring him or her home. Set up a litter box that has low sides because the kitten needs to be able to enter and exit the box without fear of falling. Fill the litter pan 3 inches with a good quality litter. Place it in an area that will be easy to clean because kitties can be very messy when they dig. A quiet place for the litter pan is also very important. If the kitten is afraid of the area the litter pan is in, it may cause the kitten to eliminate waste in unwanted areas. So, keep the litter box away from noisy, high-traffic areas.
Buy a good quality kitten food, preferably wet. Kitten's teeth are tiny and cannot yet chew kibble. It is not advised to soak kibble in water or milk because bacteria may begin to grow in the kibble very quickly and could make the kitten sick. Ask your veterinarian which kitten food they would recommend. Make fresh, clean water available at all times.
Bringing a Kitten Home
The trip between where the kitten was obtained and where it will live can be very scary for the kitten. Always secure the kitten in an appropriate carrier while driving! The kitten will probably be scared being in the carrier, so make the trip as short as possible. If there is a passenger in the car, allow them to hold the carrier so the kitten can see the person. That helps to calm the kitten down a little.
Once kitty is home, section off a small space in the home for the kitten so it can get used to the new place slowly. Some people suggest using the bathroom space for this. However, the owner of the kitten should be in the same room as the kitten during this time. Remember, the kitten wants to find its brothers and sisters, and its mother. Now, the owner is the mother. This time is critical for bonding with the kitten. Make every attempt to reduce the chance of the kitten being frightened by something. Entice the kitten into playing gently with you. Offer a small amount of food. Place the kitten into the litter pan every hour until you see the kitten eliminate in it.
Life With a Kitten
Take the kitten to see a veterinarian as soon as possible after being brought home. Most kittens have worms and fleas, and although one can take care of those problems at home, it is best to get a full health screening of the kitten just in case there are more health issues that are not immediately visible. As soon as your kitten is old enough, it needs its shots and it needs to be spayed or neutered.
Spend plenty of time cuddling and grooming the kitten. This soothes the kitten and reduces potential behavior problems later. Use a comb to brush its fur. Keep your kitten clean by exposing it to having a bath! Kittens aren't difficult to bathe. Giving the kitten a treat, pets, and praise after the bath will help the kitten associate a bath with a reward. Be sure to use a kitten shampoo that does not have a flea-killing component to it for kittens under 3 months old. The pesticides can harm the kitten.
Behavioral Issues in Kittens
Kittens love to climb curtains, chew cables, and make noise. The most important information one can take from this article is that cats do not respond to punishment! The owner may feel tempted to roll up a newspaper and give the kitten a whack but that does nothing but scare the kitten and make it afraid of the owner. Psychological research has exclaimed over and over again that cat owners should take this issue seriously and learn about operant conditioning.
Operant Conditioning Crash-Course
Operant conditioning is a method that teaches people how to obtain desired behaviors from other people, children, and animals. Any organism that can learn can be shaped by operant conditioning. There are four ways to shape a behavior: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment.
Positive reinforcement is the act of giving something to the learner for doing something that you want them to do. If the kitten comes when called, give the kitten a little treat. Make sure when giving animals reward treats that the treat is unique and different from their every-day food. The kitten learns that if they go to the owner when the owner calls, they get a treat, so they are very likely to do it again. Eventually no treat is necessary to maintain the good behavior; it becomes engrained.
Negative reinforcement is the act of removing something from the learner for doing something that you want them to do. This method is used mainly on children. If a child studies very hard for a test at school, the parent might relieve the child from chores for the next couple of days as a reward. Taking away something the child views as bad is negative reinforcement. But with cats and kittens, we want to be sure we can remove as much unnecessary bad things from the environment regardless.
Positive punishment sounds like a contradiction at first. Positive punishment is the act of giving the kitten something it does not like in order to reduce a bad behavior. Squirting a kitten with a water bottle because it is in the act of scratching up the furniture can be an effective and harmless way of discouraging bad behavior. Hitting a kitten for climbing up the curtains is positive punishment, but is an ineffective approach to disciplining the animal. The kitten learns that sometimes the owner likes to hurt it so it should not always trust the human or feel safe around the human. Positive punishment often makes cats timid and less affectionate. Constantly punished cats have MANY more behavioral problems. The cat becomes nervous of the human, and that anxiety manifests as bad behavior such as eliminating outside of the litter box, excessive shedding, excessive vocalizations, cowering when the owner tries to pet the kitten, aggressive biting and hissing, and many other things.
Negative punishment is the act of taking away something from the kitten in order to reduce a bad behavior. For example, if the kitten plays too rough, the owner stops playing with the kitten immediately and does not even look at the kitten. The owner is attempting to reduce the bad behavior by taking away playtime. Negative punishment does not work for owners who take away a kitten's food because it eliminated in the wrong area. Not only is it unnecessary and cruel, a kitten cannot understand the connection between it's food being taken away and its last trip to the potty.
Putting it all Together
The best animal trainers use positive reinforcement to train their pets. It takes a lot of time and the owner must be patient with the kitten. Praise the kitten immediately when you see the kitten do something good like eliminating in the litter pan, playing on the floor with toys, scratching on a scratching post instead of the couch, or coming to the owner when called. When the kitten does something bad--ignore it. Do not even yell at the kitten. Do not look at the kitten. Do not do anything that could even suggest to the kitten that it's doing something you like. Cats, just like all other animals, learn from getting rewards. The owner can curb annoying behaviors by outsmarting the cat. If the cat is scratching the bedroom door at night, place aluminum foil on the door--cats hate the sound it makes and will stop scratching at the door. The consequences of hitting or yelling at a kitten can result in having a kitten that is disobedient and troublesome. They may be annoying now while they are learning but the owner will thank themselves later when their cat is trained, versus an owner who's cat is not trained.
Sources
http://www.cattrainingguides.com/using-operant-conditioning-in-training-your-cat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning
http://cats.about.com/od/amyshojai/a/Cat-Behavior-Terms-Negative-Reinforcement.htm
Christy Bowen - Christy is a student at Eastern Kentucky University. She is a senior behavioral psychology major with a 3D sculpture minor.
