How to prepare your home for a Ragdoll kitten

We send every family a version of this list about a fortnight before pickup day. It isn't long, and most of it you can buy in one trip. The point isn't to spend money — it's to have everything in place so that the first week is boring for your kitten, which is exactly what you want.

Start with one room, not the whole house

The single most common mistake is opening the front door and letting a twelve-week-old kitten loose in a four-bedroom house. It's overwhelming, and an overwhelmed kitten hides under a bed for three days and won't eat.

Pick one quiet room — a spare bedroom or a study works well, a laundry does not — and set it up completely before the kitten arrives. It needs food, water, a litter tray, a bed, a scratching post and a couple of toys, with the tray as far from the food as the room allows. Your kitten lives there for the first two or three days. After that you open the door and let them decide how fast to explore.

Ours go home already used to a house full of noise, so this usually takes less time than people expect. But give them the option.

The eleven things to buy

• Two litter trays — one per cat plus one spare. Large, open trays; kittens grow into them fast.
• Clumping litter, the same type we use. Changing litter and house in the same week causes accidents.
• Ceramic or stainless bowls — one for water, one for wet food, one for dry. Plastic scratches and holds bacteria.
• A second water bowl in another room. Cats drink more when water is away from food.
• A tall scratching post — at least 80 cm, so an adult Ragdoll can stretch out fully against it.
• A cat tree by a window. Vertical space matters more to a cat than floor space.
• A stainless steel comb. We send ours home with the kitten, but a spare never hurts.
• Nail clippers — the small scissor type. Your kitten is already used to having their feet handled.
• A hard carrier that opens from the top as well as the front. Top-opening carriers make vet visits far easier.
• A fortnight of the food we send home, so you don't have to change anything at once.
• Two or three toys, including a wand toy. Put the rest away and rotate them.

Four hazards Australian homes miss

Kitten-proofing is mostly common sense, but four things come up again and again with our families.

1. Lilies, and a long list of other plants

Every part of a lily is fatal to cats, including the pollen and the water in the vase. If someone sends you flowers, check them before they come inside. Also worth removing: philodendron, dieffenbachia, monstera, sago palm and cut daffodils.

2. Blind and curtain cords

A looped cord is a strangulation risk for a climbing kitten. Cleat them high on the wall or cut the loop. This is the one that worries us most in apartments.

3. Balconies, flyscreens and tilt windows

A standard flyscreen will not hold a determined cat, and a tilt-and-turn window is a genuine trap. If you have a balcony, net it properly before the kitten arrives — not after the first scare.

4. Washing machines and recliners

Kittens sleep in warm, dark, enclosed spaces. Check the drum before every wash and be careful with reclining chairs and sofa beds for the first few months. We have heard some awful stories from other breeders.

Do one thing at a time. Don't bath, worm, change food or introduce the dog in the first week — your kitten has already had the biggest change of their life.

Introducing other pets

Keep them apart at first and let them smell each other under a door for several days. Then swap rooms so each animal explores the other's scent without a face-to-face meeting. When you do introduce them, do it briefly, with the dog on a lead, and stop before anything goes wrong rather than after.

Ragdolls generally settle with dogs and other cats very well — ours grow up with a labrador — but a resident adult cat needs a fortnight of patience, not an afternoon.

What the first week actually looks like

Expect a great deal of sleeping, a slightly reduced appetite for a day or two, and a kitten that is bolder each evening than they were that morning. Soft stools for a couple of days are common and usually settle on their own; anything longer than that, or any refusal to eat for more than 24 hours, is a phone call to your vet and to us.

Ring us at any point. Every family we've homed a kitten with has our mobile number, and we would much rather answer a small question on a Sunday night than hear about it a fortnight later.