Help for a new cat owner!

[TiddleTaddleTat]

I had 2 cats as a child that lived to a grand old age (20 and 18) and were a much loved part of the family. After years of renting and not being able to have pets we have just had the call to say we can take two beautiful 1 year old brothers.
Excited!! And bamboozled.
On my list to get hold of in the next week:

• 2 litter trays
• food and water bowls (I'm guessing one each is right?)
• food - apparently they are both eating 2 pouches a day plus biscuits as and when. Their food has varied because of donations etc. Can anyone suggest budget friendly places to get hold of good cat food? I don't like the packaging on the pouches, is it possible to get the same thing in a recyclable tin ?
• scratching post if budget allows

Eek! So excited and daunted!!

A vet once told me that wet food (pouches) isn't particularly good for cats

We feed our boy dry food when we get up, a pouch about 4pm and a bit more dry around 7pm

We leave two small glasses of water away from the food as we've been told cats don't like their water near their food. Once we found this out we moved the water and he does drink a lot more now!

Our boy is also microchipped and we have a PerSafe cat flap that therefore only lets him in which I would strongly recommend as you will have unwanted visitors otherwise HTH

Ah, sound like they will love living with you.
A good quality cat brush. Our loves to be brushed and some fish/stick type toys are good.
We don't have a cat flap, she goes in and out of the window or front & back door as she please during the day, and stays in all night.

Don't buy a lot of cat food, unless you know they will eat it.

I get cat food from wherever. He will eat Aldi cat food but won't go near the Lidl basic.He likes Felix, Gourmet Perle and Sheba trays. He will point blank refuse to eat pate cat food.

He will not drink water from a bowl on the floor.

Don't buy a cat bed. They like to vary where they sleep. His favourite spot is where I lie on the bed.

They will be very timid for a couple of weeks but go from timid toddlers to stroppy teenagers remarkably quickly.

A brush is a real investment.

If you have a garden, you might want some catmint. It grows quite easily from a cutting.

We leave dry food out and give wet a couple of times a day. Flea treatment given monthly (also treats some worms) and wormer given every 6 months (covers worms not covered by the monthly treatment)

yes to microchip catflap too

@dementedpixie
Do you take to the vet for these work and flea treatments ?
The rescue centre mentioned something about validity of insurance and self-bought/administered treatments?
I don't know if we could manage such frequent vet visits tbh, but would do so if necessary of course

*worm

Once your vet has given the cats a check up/weighed them, etc then you dont need to take them back to get the flea/worm treatments. Mine get their annual boosters and then I just phone and order treatments for collection without needing to bring the cats back.

Feliway has been really helping my older cat adjust to having a new friend in the house. We have a diffuser plugged in but the spray really quickly calms him down from being a growly little sod to a cat who will happily settle down.

Great to know @Gingerkittykat I might try and get some feliway
@dementedpixie thanks that's a relief ! So I'd better register with a vet then as sounds like they'll need to visit fairly soon after moving in - although I'm guessing let them get settled in over a few weeks first?

If you do end up going grain free, then as well as Butcher's, as PP has mentioned, Sainsbury's own is also good value grain free. In tins, pouches and dry too I think.

We switched to grain free when our new rescue kittens kept on having dodgy tummies. But they have iams dry rather than Sainsbury's.

Thanks , I may well do that. I'm a coeliac myself so would be happier without loads of gluten hanging about! Doesn't seem right for cats surely? I don't know what I'm on about really.

Grain free is better for cats as they are obligate carnivores and find it hard to digest.

I'm using feliway friends (plug in upstairs and down) it's made a huge difference with my two cats accepting the kitten.

Check with your vets whether they do an annual health plan. This is completely separate from your insurance plan (which covers illness/accidents etc).

The health plan is monthly payments which cover their annual health check, annual booster, worming and flea treatment. Taking the plan, it works out cheaper than paying for each element as it arises, and it’s great knowing that you have a set amount going out each month.

Don't buy a cat bed. ....a free cardboard box however they will love!

Thanks so much for all the advice, have got quotes for accident and illness insurance - lifetime is from £8-10 per month for both which seems pretty good.
Placed an order at zooplus for the essentials and..
Will get food and litter from Tesco as that was what they were used to, and see how we go.

All I need to do yet is make space for their things, do a recce making sure the house is reasonably cat safe and register with a vet and enquire about annual plans .
And then welcome the little furries!

One last thing ! (Ok, maybe not the last , I still need to post pics once the boys arrive )
We are due to have carpet fitted in our bedrooms in a few weeks time. Got discount roll ends but they are... wool Berber. The carpet salesperson said NO! No way can you have this with cats. Well...
There will be hard floors downstairs and probably on stairs too.
Do we attempt to not allow cats in our bedrooms ? Or only supervised?
We should have plenty of offcuts left over so was planning to make a variety of carpet and rope scratching apparatus for them that might possibly distract from the carpet itself ...!!

We put a little bit of cat nip on two scratching posts in different rooms to encourage ours to scratch those (in preparation for a loop carpet!) and that has sort of worked...? He 99% chooses the posts but it is virtually impossible to a) keep our cat out of a room (he'll scratch the carpet under the door trying to get in) and b) 100% discourage scratching the carpet. However we just accepted the fact the carpet we wanted was looped and we would have to replace in a few years - that's just the joy of cat ownership!

“Do we attempt to not allow cats in our bedrooms”

Best of British on that one. It has been attempted before.

Don't mention upstairs in front of the cats and they'll never know it's there.

Haha ! Yes I know there is literally zero chance of keeping them out of our bedrooms...
I appreciate we will probably need to replace the carpet sooner, just want to keep up some sort of attempt if we can (and pretend to DH)

CharlieAlphaTango grew up in a bungalow and lived with me for about two weeks before I told him about the stairs.

He now sleeps wherever he likes, the preferred place being my space in the bed. The whole house is cat coloured.

I used to think he was upstairs and thought I'd forgotten that I had let him out, but he learnt very quickly how to climb and jump out of the bedroom window. He'll sometimes climb back in. It is quite a feat.