Kittens, French doors, hot summer

[Imchlibob]

So excited yesterday to have our home visit from our local cat rescue place yesterday. The lady who visited was very positive and said they currently have 3 litters who have been born in the last 3-4 weeks and so we could have kittens in 5-6 weeks time.

We have been sadly without cats for the last couple of years since our last elderly gentleman died, and are so looking forward to having fluffballs causing chaos.

It has just occurred to me though that we are going to have serious problems over the summer. In hot weather this house is like a sauna and you can only survive by having lots and lots of open windows. How can we manage the coming summer with kittens who won't be allowed outside till November?

There will be no way of keeping kittens away from open windows and doors - it's all very open-plan, the only bit they could be shut into would be the downstairs loo which would be crazy.

Someone else must have had this problem before. Any advice or recommendations? Presumably cat-proof barriers exist but in my experience they can get over/under/around pretty much anything!

I have a 4 month old kitten so she cannot go out until she is spayed so possibly 1-2 months yet, I have recently installed flat cats in our upstairs Windows. I am really impressed with the flat cat we can now safely open our windows, regards to patio doors they will need to stay shut, also I would not put kittens in a crate.

I hope you get your new kittens and enjoy them there is nothing like a fluff ball running around.

Cat proof your garden? That’s what we have done so our cats can come outside with us but are still safe from cars etc.

Thanks again for replies.

Turns out I was jumping the gun anyway. We have not been approved due to proximity to the road. That seems a bit unfair as it is cat-central around here.

Going to look into escape-proofing the garden - but it's unlikely that will be done before autumn anyway. 🙁

Oh no. What a shame. Hope you can cat proof the garden.

Maybe a blessing in disguise if they DO let you have a cat but only after the garden has been cat-proofed. You see so many sad threads on here with people losing their cats to cars .

I'm OK with cat proofing - there are so many cats around here that I was thinking the new kittens will need to be good fighters right from the start to carve out a territory for themselves. Cat proofing will work both ways and mean they can have our garden all to themselves. It will probably be a year before I can afford it though as there will be quite a lot of work to do.

I bought the flat cats mesh for windows, it's great and worked perfectly. I think they do it for doors also?

I also bought a microchip cat flap as we had a old boy that still wanted to go out. So he could while the kitten couldn't. Worked great until one night she darted out right behind him and it locked with her tail tip still halfway through.
She was ok but poor baby cried!

Well you can rig up mesh to cover windows, and then get them neutered at 4 months.