Kitten advice please - bringing her/him home

[MrsWobbleTheWaitress]

We are trying to work out the best way to create a safe space for our kitten to live in for hte first couple of weeks when we bring him/her home in a couple of months. At the moment our options are the downstairs loo (with the loo seat down, of course!) or a pen in the living room. I'd prefer a pen in the living room so that he/she can get used to family life from that safe space.

Does that sound ok? How big does the pen have to be? I'm looking at things like this but I'm not sure how high it ought to be, or how large in area.

I would of course put all the kitten's things in there - food bowl, litter, hidey-bed thing, scratching post.

What are you wanting to protect the kitten from? Do you have dogs/other cats? Or is it your children? We have a kitten we got in January and for the first few weeks we put a child gate across the utility room door so that she could go in there without our dog following her - could you do something like that? The pen looks okay but quite small (would you use it all the time?) and shutting the kitten in alone in a fairly small room might be a bit of a shame.

Well all the books etc. says to give it it's own space for a couple of days. They say ideally it's own room(!) but we haven't got a suitable room for it to have except the downstairs loo, which isn't that suitable, obviously.

Seems, from my reading, that the next best thing is a pen in a bigger room. I also want to make sure it doesn't destroy the room while we're asleep!

there is no reason for the kitten to have its own room.. as long as they have their bed as there safe place they should settle fine.. i brought our new kitten home on wednesday and she has settled fine.. infact she is asleep on my lap now..

In theory a kitten (or a cat for that matter) will be fine as long as it has somewhere to retreat to. Ours had the run of the dining room and kitchen when they first came to us - not ideal, but the only two rooms that could be shut off easily from the rest of the house, and that had easily cleaned floors! They chose the space behind the filing cabinet, where all the cable spaghetti from the PC lives, which is really really not ideal, but I think they liked the warm and purry PC! Of course, they're not normal cats, they seem to put themselves to bed at night, and are still there in the morning.

When I got my kitten she was 5 weeks old and I know now probably too young. She straight away had the run of the house but it was fun looking for her as she was so small.

Make sure she can't get outside until you want her too and she has been spayed and had all her jabs, but I would just let her find her away the house straight away.

i have always had cats and to be honest i would let her do what she wishes and have run of house. only becasue if she gets scared she can go somewhere and feel safe. most of my kittens had 7 since i left home except one were all fine. the one that lived ubder our tele unit for ages is now 5 as is as soft and friendly. she is adorable. i really would nt worry. if you find she/he stays in one area then obviously let it stay round there, would advise not keeping litter tray near food as they dont like toileting where they eat. a family member runs a cattery for 8 years now and with lots of her advice as above we not had a prob good luck