First time cat staff - is this ok?

[Puffinity]

Hi everyone! As some of you know, we picked up our 3yo rescue cat last night. She seems to be quite at ease, although she's hiding away a bit more now (not scared though). I am just a little concerned that she seems to have drunk hardly any water since she got here, and she's hardly eaten anything either. She has two bowls of water and had wet food last night. DH topped this up with dry food this morning, and when I noticed I gave her fresh dry kibble in a clean bowl (the dry food had gone all soggy on top of the wet food). She had a pee in the litter tray this morning, but no poo yet. Could the litter tray and food/ water be too close together? We have a hallway that is appr 1 meter wide, food and drink are in the kitchen on the right off the hallway, the litter tray on the left. To us, they're in separate rooms, but might they be too close for her? I'd love to hear your ideas - I don't want to make a fool of myself by calling the vet straight away

[thecatneuterer]

Cats frequently don't eat/drink/pee or poo for a two to three days after first arriving somewhere new. If she's done at least some of those things then you're doing well.

[DesolateWaist]

I'm not an expert but cats drink very little water. They get most of their liquid from the wet food.
Mine will only drink water if it's from a puddle or if it's from my bedside glass to wake me up.

[chemenger]

In my experience this sounds about normal. They seem to eat relatively little in the first day or two. Maybe they don't want to stuff themselves so that they are ready to fight or flee, then once they realise they are safe they eat more. Mine have always preferred to have water and food separated, ours have food on one side of the kitchen and water on the other. I have had my present cat for 12 years and I have yet to see her drink, but little boy used to settle down for a good drink a couple of times a day, so it varies. The litter tray separation sounds OK to me, and the fact that she has peed shows she knows where it is and what it is for. Or maybe she has pooed in your shoe...

[RoastChickenDinner]

Sounds OK to me. PreciousPussGirl only ate in secret for the first few days, eventhough she would venture on to your knee. I also worried that she hadn't used her tray for about 3 days and was on the verge of phoning the rescue /vet for advice when she decided she'd exerted her authority enough and obliged!

[Puffinity]

Please to announced she has pooed now! Well not so pleased in that the whole house stinks of cat shit, but ykwim! She went when I was out, I guess she is a bit more stressed than you would think when looking at her. Annoyingly, I was wrongly told to let her have free run of the whole house and I can't open the windows because she might escape so it's not particularly pleasant here atm...

Thanks to all who posted reassurance!

[werekitty]

A covered litter tray helps keep the odour contained!

[Puffinity]

Yeah, ours is covered but it's downstairs and the loo is upstairs so I had to carry her business upstairs in a scoop, which made the whole house smell...

[TondelayaDellaVentamiglia]

we used to keep the litter tray in the bathroom...keep all the stinks together, and our first two cats were happy to share, and barely used it anyway

current cats do not care to share trays or even use the same one for peeing and pooing, so every bloody corner of the house seems to have litter trays in now.

[Potentialmadcatlady]

Add a little water to her wet food..helps get fluid into her

[cakesandphotos]

When ours were tiny and hadn't learnt how to lap (really tiny!) we gave them wet food with gravy not jelly and the vet said they would get enough liquid from their food and not to worry if we couldn't get more than a couple of syringes into them a day