The big day has finally arrived! The day your cat is home. What to do now? Assuming that you have already gone to buy everything you need (food, toys, scratching post, bed, ...), surely you will have many doubts about what the next steps should be, right?
And it is that the first day - and the following ones 🙂 - it will be very difficult to resist the temptation to give a lot of pampering, but this is not entirely positive. So, I'm going to tell you what to do the first day the cat comes home.
As soon as we take the cat home, we usually leave the carrier on the floor, open the door and encourage it to go out with either cat treats or toys. We are very excited that you begin to explore what is now your home, that you leave your past behind and that you begin to be happy with us. But if we stop to think about this for a moment, we will realize that we often do not take into account what is best for the animal.
You'll see, the feline likes to explore a lot, yes. He is very curious. But he does it little by little, by zones. When he leaves the carrier, the first thing he sees is a place that is too big, an unknown place, with new people and smells. This can be intimidating. For this reason, it is highly advisable to keep it in a room for a couple of days, since this way you can feel calmer and, therefore, it will be easier for you to leave your smell (you have more information about marking here). In it he will have his bed, water, food, and a litter box, although the latter will have to be moved when the animal does its routine around the home.
Another thing that is highly recommended to do is go on with the routine; I mean, yes, we have a cat at home, but we're going to get on with our lives, ignore him a bit so that he feels free to do whatever he wants. Of course, we can (in fact, we must so that take us trust) offer treats and invite him to play, but without weighing you down. One of our tasks now is understand their body language so that human-cat communication is good for both parties; so we can build a wonderful friendship.
As you can see, during the first day you don't have to do much: just leave it in a room, start loving it and make sure it's okay 🙂.
I hope these tips are useful to you.