Bringing a new kitten into your family is bound to be an exciting time, but should you be worried about introducing him to your kids? The answer is No; as long as you follow these essential tips for introducing a new kitten to kids, you’ll have a well-adjusted kitten and children who know how to respect animals.
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Take it Slowly
Your new kitten is likely to be overwhelmed by his new surroundings; add excitable children to this and it can be a bit too much. Your children are bound to be thrilled with their new playmate, but you should make sure that they understand that they have to take their time in getting to know him. This will obviously be more difficult the younger the children are, but instilling a respect for animals and an understanding of how to treat them when your kids are young is a great start in life.
Be Gentle
Being handled at a young age will help ensure your nervous kitten turns into a confident, well-socialised cat, but it has to be gentle. Young kittens are delicate, despite what you might think after seeing him racing around the house at the speed of light.
Get Down to His Level
Encourage your children to lie down on the floor to meet your kitten; it’s less threatening for your kitten to have everyone on his level, and he’s more likely to feel comfortable approaching you and your children.
Set the Ground Rules
As we all know, children can get noisy when they’re over excited, and what could be more exciting than a cute little kitten? Make sure that they know to speak in soft voices, without squealing, screeching or screaming around him, because the last thing they’ll want to do is scare him! Other understandable ground rules should be no pulling of tails and no squeezing too hard (no matter how cute he is!).
Get the Kids Involved
Depending on their ages, give your children responsibility for different aspects of looking after your kitten, for example feeding time, changing litter and coming on visits to the vet. Apart from making them feel involved, it’ll also teach them about responsible pet parenting.
The Right Way to Play
Once kitten and kids have been properly introduced, and your kitten is more comfortable with the whole family, it’s important to teach your children the right way to play with cats. Playing rough is a bad idea, even though a little kitten’s claws won’t make much of an impact now – when he grows up and wants to carry on playing rough, it could end in tears!
Keep an Eye on Proceedings
Make sure that any time together is supervised until you’re absolutely certain that your children know exactly how to behave and handle the kitten.
Once your whole family is comfortable with the new kitten, you’re well on your way to having a well-socialised cat, respectful and knowledgeable children, and an all-round happy family!
How have you introduced a new kitten to children? What tips do you have ?
Images: Emily Mitchell / Nicolas Suzor / Pargon / Ryan Forsythe via Flickr
You made a good point when you said that bringing a new kitten home is very exciting. I have 2 kids who love pets, and they have their own puppies. My plan is to give them kittens next month. I’m sure they’ll love it. I’m gonna get the cutest kittens available.
My son was really young when we got our cats and was gentle, it was beautiful 🙂
Now we would like to get more cats but our worry is how our cats would cope with a new kitten or cat. It would great to hear some tips on that subject!
Great advice! It is really important that children learn respect for animals as living creatures. Humans are not born with the knowledge of how to care for an animal so it must be taught. It’s pretty easy to forget that things you do with a kitten may translate into problems as an adult cat later on.
Wonderful tips. No kids here, but these are good to keep in mind whenever folks with little ones adopt kittens from the shelter!
Excellent post with good info. All the kitten photos are a bonus!
Great tips! Mom is still always telling us to be gentle around our kitty. We love her but sometimes the feelings aren’t always mutual!
The most important is definitely how to be gentle and responsable. This doesn’t come naturally for kids.
Great tips ! It’s really impawtant that both kittens and children are educated together ! We think that your advices fit for first time kitten owners too ! Purrs
These are really great tips! I would add to let your kids know that it’s not okay to pull a kitten (or adult cat) out of his/her hiding place. A new kitten may hide initially due to nervousness.
Really important advice – particularly relevant to me as I am looking at adding a kitten to my own family in October 🙂 I’m SO excited, but will have to manage proceedings very carefully with a 3 year old and a baby in the house!