About to adopt two rescue kittens, will it be like bringing home a newborn baby with lack of sleep?

[DrRichardWebber]

I appreciate this is probably a bit of a ridiculous question. I grew up with cats, but never kittens.

We are due to adopt two beautiful rescue kittens this week. Do I need to prepare myself for broken nights sleep? My cats growing up spent the night in a very large living room with litter tray/food/toys/water. They never woke us up until we went down at 7am. I haven’t managed to read anything that tells me what they do at night.

Thanks in advance (and any additional advice very welcome!).

How old are they? There’s a big difference between 3 months & 6 months, for instance.

Sorry, they are 12 weeks old.

Still little babies then!

I’d expect a few broken nights. Especially if they’ve been used to sleeping with their mum & the rest of the litter.

Thanks so much. I’ve got two young children so very used to the broken nights!

Not sleepless no, more like slaughtered like a nightmare on elm street victim

If they sleep (!) in your room that is! Other than that you'll be grand

We fostered a 9-10 week old stray recently who wanted company at night 2-3 times or the first week and then once for another week. Part of it was diarrhoea from (i assume) change of food plus deworming/ defleaing and vaccinations all the same day so it wanted help going and cleaning up. Covered litterbox, no liners and moving to a more exciting room all helped.

It won't be a problem at all. Especially if there are two of them. They will just curl up and go to sleep at night, unlike a puppy.

We’ve just adopted a 9 week old. First night shut him on the top floor so he wouldn’t be overwhelmed which is DD’s room and a bathroom so put bowls on landing, tray in the bathroom. He slept next to her in bed and not on the fancy cat bed we bought, standard, but no disturbances. Gradually introduced run of the house but never had sleep disturbed. My last young kitten was years ago and gave him free run from the get go as was only a small flat and again he didn’t disturb our sleep. I didn’t realise it was common for them to have you up, maybe we’ve been lucky!

Should be fine with 2 of them, as they are company for each other. Just make sure they have access to water and possibly a little bit of food.
Have fun!!

Never had a new born baby in the house, but I can tell you that a kitten compared to a puppy is an absolute dream as far as sleeping at night goes.

If you let them into your room, they might parade around on your bed for a bit before settling down and there might be a bit of excited rushing around early in the morning but not usually anything that would wake you for more than a moment, and once they are used to you and your house, they will sleep when you do.

We’ve always kept ours downstairs so no disturbed nights for us, they’ve always been fine.

I think it will be more like hearing a herd of rampaging elephants conducting all out thermonuclear warfare with a rival hippopotamus gang. Whilst armed with 4-5 tiny razors on every corner.

You've seen Tom & Jerry cartoons? That's what the buggers genuinely sound like.

We obviously need the Kitten Tax (double rate for the additional cuteness) paid before we go any further, though.

The BalletCats arrived in my life as 8 week old BalletKittens unused to human contact, windows, kitten food, regular meals, toys, Not Being In An Attic, a litter tray rather than a baking tray with cat litter on…

So they were quite happy, the first couple of days, with being shut in the kitchen, even with the Strange Human. Then the next few days, my shutting them in there overnight after we’d been hanging out together in the sitting room.

It took a long time for them to achieve their goal of sleeping in my room with me - they’d been stressed out by my vanishing into hospital for a fortnight & spent almost my entire absence on my bed. How could I evict them after that…?

Much depends, I think, on the kittens & their background. But ungodly o’clock zoomies are pretty much universal - & I don’t think ever outgrown…

I've never had an issue with kittens at night, I put them in a room with their food, water, litter tray and bed and they are fine until the morning.

Puppies are a completely different experience!!

My kittens stayed in one room for the first week to acclimatise, they were fine - they had each other which is the most important thing to them. Now I just have to make sure my bedroom door is shut when I go to sleep because otherwise I get caught up in the late night/early morning zoomies.

Depends really we have adopted our cats as kittens at 16 and 8 weeks and neither bothered us at night.
Getting two at the same time is good too as they're likely to keep eachother company.

Thank you so much for all the advice, hugely appreciated