Need LOTS of advice - recently adopted 3 kittens

[KittyQMeow]

We have unexpectedly become cat parents to three kittens who lost their mother. They were meant to be temporary fosters after a neighbour's appeal, but as is often the way, we (two adults, two young kids) have fallen desperately in love with them all and have decided to adopt them.

I haven't owned any pets since my childhood, and am now struggling to make sense of what we need to have in place. Here's what we have so far:

• All three neutered and microchipped by the charity that rescued them.
• We are doing two wet meals a day (AVA kitten food) and two dry meals a day (Purina One kitten)
• they are indoor only for now, but will be allowed to free roam from the spring, when they will be about 9 months old.

I just desperately need advice on the following:

• how do you find decent pet insurance that isn't very expensive but still has good coverage? What should I look for as reasonable cover, excess and treatments for kittens? What do you all pay on average per month?
• how often do you use flea/worm treatments on your kitties, and what's the best way to source this? Do we need to go through a vet or are over the counter good enough?
• how do you know a vet is decent? What kinds of charges do we look out for? I don't even know how vet practices are structured, other than a friend saying they are ALL so different, so how do I as a newbie know what is the right one to go with?
• how often do you take your cats to the vet? Do you do annual checks? Or is that just overkill for the average family pet? What's the kind of healthcare schedule your cats are on?
• do you brush your cat's teeth??? We never did that for our childhood cat, but now I hear that's an expectation??!

My questions are endless really, from how to feed them when we are away for the day etc etc. But would appreciate any/all gentle advice on the vet/insurance/healthcare portion so we aren't feeling so out of our depth.

Like PP have said: often vets have a special plan for sorting flea spot treatments and worming. I use the (vet prescribed spot on flea treatment) each month, and worming tablets every 3 months. The vet plan I use includes other things like annual boosters and vet checks too. For two of my cats, the vet also also suggested using the Seresto collar (for fleas, ticks etc), in conjunction with a spot on treatment. It is for cats up to 8kg in weight, and lasts about 8 months but is good protection. One of the cats is 10kg (Maine Coon), but it's worked brilliantly, and we've not had any problems with ticks (or fleas for that matter!). Before having the Seresto collar, we did have some fleas/ticks (despite using the spot treatments every month!). As a precaution, I also spray the house with Indorex spray once or twice a year. Floors are vacuumed and cleaned daily to also help prevent this (NB I have robovacs for this!!).

I've got 4 cats, and they're adults (ranging from 2-4yrs old, though I do wonder at the 2yr old MC sometimes....he's a giant kitten!), so I put out the amount of food they need in a day, all in one go. They've learned to manage what they eat in one sitting, but one of them does sometimes eat too quickly then is sick. Two of my cats have vet prescribed diets, so I use microchip-read feeders for each. If they were all able to eat the same thing, I'd use a (much cheaper) timed feeder. The feeders have built in scales, so I know exactly how much to put in for each cat. They're allowed to go out (at certain times of day only, never at night), but I use a microchip-read cat flap. I can program the cat flap so it allows them out at certain times during day light hours only (they can get into house at any time though!). I have two litter robots for them (automatically cleans the litter each time a cat uses it), and one normal litter tray (scooped daily).

I vary the toys that they have (rotate what I have so they can have new things to play with). I've also put up climbing things on the walls for them to all play on.

I did buy cat beds for them, but they all sleep on my/the DCs beds!!

Mine are all insured, not cheap! Check which insurance companies your vet covers.

They are adorable!! Black cats are often overlooked so you have done a lovely thing keeping them. Ask around friends and family to see what vets they recommend, petplan insurance is pricy but they cover most things and actually pay out so I personally would recommend them. Definitely get flea and worm stuff from the vets

Just came to say that they are adorable. Black cats are the best!
We also inadvertently ended up with 3 kittens last year. It does end up expensive!
We initially fed a pouch twice a day and just left kibble down to eat when they wanted.
Insured through Tesco.
Registered with vet. Got prescription for flea/ worming tablets then bought from online pharmacy using prescription.
Tried different cat litters but they prefer non clumping. We however prefer the clumping one as it does track about the house.
They will all have such different personalities and bring so much fun and joy whilst being utter pain in the arses!

Cardboard boxes are always a big hit, especially if you cut holes in some of them. Two of my fosters had a game where one was in the box & one just outside, & they took turns trying to whack each other while the other one dodged.

@TicTac80 I am in awe. That is all.

This is exactly what my children have done this weekend! Made them "houses" out of cardboard boxes with holes for "windows". Endless fun!

Be careful with this. If you take out a new policy, it won't cover any preexisting conditions OR anything you've seen the vet about. Or anything at all that the vet has noted on their notes.

So unless you're sure your cat has a completely clean bill of health, you may not be covered.

Tesco usually do that annoying thing of bringing the premium down if you call them. Which is mighty irritating, but it's 5 minutes of pain I'm happy to go through each year to save some money.

As someone who also has three black cats, can I commend you on your decision.
Personally we free fed the cats as kittens (and continue as adults). Bowls empty - we top them up.
Otherwise you get this...
It goes without saying that your three are gorgeous 😻

Honestly? I have “outsourced” (in the way of gadgets like robovacs) as much as I could, to make my life easy (I work FT), and to keep on top of things with the cats (and the house)!! And only able to get these because of some money left to me by my parents. It does make things easier (and my house cleaner!).

If two of the cats weren’t on prescription diets, then believe me, I’d keep things a lot simpler! but thank you ☺️ x

And now to answer your questions.
Insurance
We 'self insure' so I can't comment on that.
Worming/flea treatment.
We only treat as a cure rather than as a preventative. Remarkably our outdoor (and expert rodent catchers) cats have been completely free from fleas since early 2020 so have remained untreated for over 4 years.
They get worms vanishingly rarely, we get a pill as required.
OTC solutions don't work btw. Need to source from the vet.
Outdoor timings
We let ours out from 5-6 months old. We are in an environment that is pretty safe from cars though (touch wood).
Vets
Word of mouth - but NEVER be afraid to get a second opinion if you are not convinced by your vet's advice. We always have an annual MOT and jabs.
Teeth
No we don't brush them - I value my limbs too much.

Oh, I didn’t mention teeth brushing…I don’t think I would be alive if I did that. I did try when they were all tiny, but no joy. The cats do get groomed (brushed) pretty much every day.

@TicTac80 what automatic cat litter tray do you have please, we too have 4 black/tuxedo cats so am very interested ! Thank you

I’ve got a litter robot 3 (that was the first one I bought and it was a refurb). Then I bought the litter robot 4 :)

Generally speaking, I very much appreciate Organised People who have schedules and tools in place to stay on top of responsibilities - and it sounded like you had done research and had an ideal set up (in my imaginary future where price is no consideration). I do think we will eventually need some litter and feeding gadgets too, as it's been very labour intensive minding these tiny cats.

To add to the insurance comments, make sure you get "lifetime" cover. That means if your cat has an illness that's going to need treatment over a long time or permanently that means it's still covered, otherwise they pay up just in the year you start treatment & then it's excluded. With Lifetime you just have to pay the excess each year - this can work out VERY worthwhile if your cat develops something like epilepsy, diabetes or kidney disease as the meds & treatment for these can get silly over time.

Sadly, your comment about black cats not photographing well is actually one of the reasons why they are harder to rehome 🙄

Very cute kittens. Fantastic foster fail.

I have nothing helpful to add to the great advice you've already been given. I was just here for the photos.

I have 7 cats (yes I’m bonkers).

We make use of gadgets to make life easier so I have automatic water fountains, automatic feeders, litter robots and robotic vacuums to manage the fluff (mine are all long haired also). Means my free time is spent playing and cuddling with the cats rather than cleaning up after them etc.

I attempted to brush teeth, I quickly gave up. They hate it!

We self insure as with so many cats insurance was a lot of money and when you don’t use it then it’s wasted. Instead I put what I would be paying in insurance into a savings account each month and use that for vet trips. Of course this relies on having savings available if you end up with a big bill before you’ve built up the vet fund.

My cats are mostly indoors with supervised access to the back garden so I don’t flea and worm them on the traditional schedule as they are very low risk but I do it every 3 months as a precaution. I get the vet to write a prescription for this and buy it online as it’s much much cheaper.

Mine have an annual health check when they go for their booster vaccine each year.

They'e gorgeous. Nos 1 and 3 look identical in the photos, is one of them Mr/Ms Chatty?

Gorgeous kittens. My boy is just shy of 7 months. I use petplan because they had a multi pet deal and my 9 year old dog is already with them. He's not long been wormed and flead but with my dog I get them online from one of the vet stores. You can set up monthly/ 3 monthly subscriptions so you don't have to remember. I strongly recommend the flapping duck toy. Mine is obsessed (although it seems to be getting a little sexual at the moment despite him being neutered). Also you should try to hypnotise them by stroking their feet. Sends my little weirdo into an absolute trance!

You are all so lovely, thank you for the advice!

Fab username! 😄

Wow they are beautiful and so fluffy!

Number 2 in photos is the chatty one. Lots of chirpy opinions. Number 1 has the white on belly but it's not seen in the photo.

What are their names or are you still deciding?

ooh, another couple of things I thought of:

-tick remover tool...this is handy to have at hand. My MC had two occasions last year (before Seresto collar) where he had ticks. One was on an eyelid! Amazingly he let me get that one of him, but the second time, I wasn't sure I'd removed it all, so freaked and took him to vet for a check up. That's when they issued the collar (in addition to his monthly flea stuff).

-a weird syringe thing that is used to give tablets (my cats have dry food, so it's difficult to hide the worming tablets from them).

FWIW, I'm mostly(!) organised, but I do know that anything that makes life a bit easier is always a good thing. So, it's good knowing that place isn't overrun with cat hair/dander and that the litter trays are all kept clean. I got the litter robots a few months in after getting my 2nd and 3rd cat (a bonded pair from a local rescue) and it was hard going doing multiple scoops of multiple litter trays each day!! Like @CatchingBabies, we also have the water fountains, but the gits cats sometimes prefer to turn on kitchen tap and drink from that instead (and the boy cats have water fights - the weirdos love getting wet).

That's another thing...be warned, they're smart...and they may work in cahoots with each other. My MC nicks stuff (food, clothing, phones, leads), and can open doors which are shut (he can pull the handles down). Two of them can turn on taps (including the MC). Keep an eye on them in case they like to chew on cables. MC has wrecked my GHD cable, a laptop charge lead and numerous USB leads. Expensive. Luckily, I don't keep any of these plugged in! I've bought cable/wire protective casing to put stuff like that in.