Your kitten is a born explorer. By allowing her to explore her environment, you’ll help her establish a safe and secure territory.
Bringing a kitten home? It must be a super exciting time for you, but have you ensured that your home is a safe space for the furball? Kittens are instinctively curious and love to go exploring new places, which makes kitten proofing your living space it all the more important for you. This includes protecting your furniture, securing cabinets with childproof latches, and making sure your backyard and garage are free of toxic items or objects that may cause injury to the tiny explorer. If you are confused about where to start and how to best go about cat proofing your house, worry no more! Here are ten essential steps on how to kitten proof your home to ensure your little munchkin’s safety and well-being. By following these tips, you'll be confident that your new friend can safely navigate your home and enjoy a happy, healthy, purrfect life.
Kittens are playful with boundless energy and a keen sense of adventure. They will definitely pounce, leap, or scratch at anything that interests them (which, frankly, are most things!) Thus, they often hurt themselves or damage household items. Cat proofing your home is essential to avoid both. Here are a few things to remember when creating a kitten safe house:
This is the first step when considering how to kitten proof your home. Kittens fit everywhere and can climb onto almost any surface. You have to enter every room in your home with the temperament of a kitten to identify that sharp edge where little furry can hurt themselves or that shelf with glass displays that kitty may damage. You have to ensure that your home is a sanctuary, a perfect cat’s home where little furry is safe and happy.
Keep your valuable scratchable items away if you don’t want your little munchkin shredding them to bits! Also, investing in scratch proof covers for your sofa is a must.
This includes doors to your washer-dryer and your bathroom. Kittens may not only escape through open doors and windows of houses but may think of the washer-dryer as a safe, warm space and attempt to drink water from the toilet, thereby running the risk of several injuries.
This step of cat proofing is for ensuring that your feline buddy does not inadvertently ingest medicines or other potentially toxic items. This will also ensure that objects within the cabinet are not damaged by your curious little friend.
The smell of food will surely entice your little furball to have a taste. There are certain human food cats absolutely must not have such as chocolates and raisins.
Kittens have a habit of chewing wires thereby risking burns and electrocution. Hence ensure that wires from household appliances don’t dangle within their reach and are encased in scratch proof and chew-proof PVC.
Kitten supplies like a sturdy scratching post, chewies, and toys are essential strategies to keep your kitten engaged and entertained when considering how to kitten proof your home. Place these strategically in areas with vulnerable furniture such as near the sofa so that scratching or chewing on these rather than your furniture will be more attractive to the restless munchkins.
Remove small objects like toffees, marbles, erasers, small toys, rubber bands, and so on from your kitten’s reach as the little furries may hurt themselves by ingesting these items.
If you are a plant parent as well, you need to remember that certain plants like lilies, azaleas, mistletoe, poinsettia, and philodendron are extremely toxic for kittens and must be kept out of their reach.
As some commercial pest control products may make cats severely ill if ingested, make sure you only use ones that are animal-safe.
If you are thinking of getting a kitten, definitely! You would want to create a safe cat house for your new furry friend and also protect your household goods and furniture from curious kitties. Kitten-proofing your home ensures both.
Some crucial first steps of kitten-proofing homes are:
You can take steps like keeping cotton drapes and blind cords out of your fur baby’s reach, keeping windows and balcony doors closed unless the kitten is being supervised, and ensuring that plants toxic to cats aren’t within their reach.
