General Kitten Care

Congratulations on purchasing your new kitten.  There are a few things you need to know to make your kitten grow into a strong adult cat.

Feeding
It is important to feed your kitten a good quality kitten dry food.  We recommend Advance Kitten.  Advance Kitten dry food is a nutritionally balanced food providing all of the essential vitamins and minerals for a growing animal.  Dry food usually decreases flatulence and minimizes diarrhea.

It is also really important to try to encourage your kitten to eat raw bones.  If you can encourage your kitten to eat raw bones (never cooked) it can limit dental disease later in life.

Worming
Your kitten needs to be wormed every 2 weeks until 12 weeks of age, every month until six months of age and then every three months for life.  This is really important, as some intestinal worms are zoonotic.  This means that they are transmissible to humans.  Some of these worms can even cause blindness in young children.  Worm infestations in young kittens can cause diarrhea, vomiting and even death.

So ensure you worm you cats regularly with a good quality all wormer.  We recommend Profender.  This is a “spot on” product, which eliminates the hassle of tablets but is proven to be effective against tapeworm, roundworm and hookworm in your kitten. Talk to your vet about worming and how to go about it.

Heartworm
Heartworm disease is a fairly rare disease in cats in Victoria.  However, unlike intestinal worm infestations, if a cat is infected there is no effective treatment.  Heartworm infections kill.

We recommend you use heartworm preventative medication every month from 12 weeks of age.  Advocate is another “spot on” product which treats cats for intestinal worms, fleas, heartworm, ear mites and lice.  It is an excellent “all in one” product. 

Fleas
There are many different flea treatments you can use, but ensure that you do place a flea prevention on your cat at least every month.

Fleas are involved in the transmission of tapeworm infections and also cause itching and scratching in your animal.

Advantage, Frontline and Advocate are all effective products. We do not recommend flea collars. 

Vaccinations
There are six diseases that we are able to vaccinate kittens/cats against. 

  • enteritis
  • calicivirus
  • rhinotracheitis (cat flu)
  • chlamydia, feline leukemia virus and
  • feline AIDS

Your cat should have received its first vaccination at 8 weeks of age before your take it home.  This is usually either an F3 or F4 vaccination.   At 12 weeks your cat will be due for another vaccination.  You need to decide on the level of protection you would like to give your cat.

If your cat is an inside only cat then F4 protection is adequate (calicivirus, enteritis, rhinotracheitis and chlamydia).  If your cat is inside/outside then you should also vaccinate against feline leukemia and feline aids.  These two diseases are spread by fighting and they KILL.
  
To upgrade your kitten or cat to full F6 vaccination cover, the protocol is as follows:

  • 1 x F6 vaccination
  • 3 weeks later a second F6 vaccination
  • Then 2 weeks later a final FIV (aids) vaccination
  • Then one annual booster each year as for any vaccination.

Litter training
Most cats are very clean animals and will already be litter trained from the moment you get them home.  However, you need to ensure that you clean the litter out daily.  (Cats do not like to hop into a dirty litter tray.)

To help reduce the odour usually associated with litter trays, we recommend a charcoal hood over your tray.  This absorbs all the odour and also prevents litter “spillage”.


Desexing
It is important to desex your cat to prevent unwanted pregnancies, as well as “calling”, male aggression, wandering and many other behaviours we would be happy to discuss with you. 

It is a day proceedure and the utmost care and attention is given to your animal whist he/she is in hospital.  We desex animals at any age but the best age is at around 4 mths.

Wildlife
It is extremely important that your cat be locked inside at night.  This prevents hunting of Australia’s special native fauna.  Most attacks on our wildlife by cats occur at night.

A good idea is to call your cat in at around 6pm, feed him or her and then keep inside for the rest of the night.

Microchipping
It is now law that all animals are microchipped.  If your animal was purchased from a pet store then your animal will already have a microchip.  If your pet has not been microchipped we can implant a chip under your cats’ skin at any time.

The cost is $54.50 and this includes life long registration with Central Animal Records.

Are you looking for a kitten?
Don’t forget that Newtown Veterinary Clinic is the Cat Adoption Centre in Geelong.

We have abandoned kittens looking for love.  They have been desexed, microchipped, wormed and vaccinated.

Males $100  Females $150.

 

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