Advice on hosting cat guest !

[JellyfishandShells]

We are going to look after my DDs 7 month Shorthair for a day in our house (work being done at his home). We know him from occasional feeding/playing regime in his house when DD out for extended time - he’s lively but endearing.

We will have his litter tray, bed, feeding stuff and scratch post. Planning on shutting all upstairs doors ( no extracting of reluctant cat from under beds! ) no windows open and being very careful about opening front and back doors. He’s an indoor cat.

Is there anything about potential behaviour that I need to plan for or be aware of ?

Sounds fine. I just came on to say no open windows, not even little, high up ones, but I see you've covered that. It would probably be better to keep him confined in one room if possible though.

The main thing is keeping him safe. He'll might become anxious and look for any way possible to escape. I'd keep him in a room without access to an external door to be on the safe side he'll, he'll be fine like that for just one day.

I would keep him in one room as it's just a day. Too much space might be overwhelming.

Thank you for that - I was worried that there was something that would be blindingly obvious to an experienced cat owner that I had not thought of ! Haven’t had a cat since I was a child.

We could restrict him to one room - if we don’t, there’s two flights of stairs I’m sure he would be up like a flash. A new neighbourhood cat wandered cheekily into our house a few months ago and was up in an top floor room in seconds.

Block off any open chimney! Honestly, I have seen more than one cat climb up to hide!

Maybe make sure he has a safe hidey hole in case he's nervous.
So a box to peer out of, or a shelf if he's a climber, or a table to sit under.

Cardboard box with blanket inside.

Keep cat in one room. Preferably one with easy clean floors. If it leads to the garden make sure the door is locket so nobody comes in from the garden forgetting the cat may escape past them into the outdoors.

If he’s inquisitive he may run through your legs/sneak past you when you go into his room so keep any other doors of the room you just came from shut too. Then at least if he escapes it’s only into the room you just came from and not the whole house if rooms lead into each other.

Keep litter tray and food/water apart. Nobody wants to eat beside the toilet. Even cats!

It all went very well :) He had a nice explore, enjoyed sitting at the window and checking out the passers by, used his litter tray, fought sleep like a toddler in case he missed any more new happenings and eventually crashed out listening to the cricket with my DH.

Aww so cute. Glad it went well. 😀

... and so you're getting your own cat, right?

Glad it went well.