How to Kitten-Proof Your House
Kitten-proofing your house is extremely important for the health and safety of your precious little kitten. Once they are old enough to get about, they want to explore their new environment and investigate all those interesting smells.
As kittens are so curious and small, it is even more important to make sure yours will be safe. This means keeping all doors and drawers shut. I don’t just mean the doors into the various rooms in your house, you need to keep the pantry door closed, all cupboard doors in the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry, all the wardrobe doors in bedrooms, and the doors to your fancy entertainment unit if you have one.
Kittens love to investigate but then get tired very easily and often fall asleep wherever they are. This means they could be shut into the pantry overnight if they have managed to get in there. Make sure you know where your kitten is before shutting the doors!
Kittens will also get into places you would never think of – under chairs, behind furniture and curtains, behind the fridge, and when they are a little bigger, into the front-loading washing machine or clothes dryer if they are at a level the kitten can jump onto. They will curl up on a pile of washing on the floor or the clothes on the floor of the kid’s bedrooms. Make sure you know where your kitten is before starting a load of washing!
Be very careful of kittens and electrical cords. Kitten teeth and claws are incredibly sharp and will bite through power cords. Keep the cords wrapped in some packing tape to make them too thick to fit into the kitten’s mouth. Try to not have dangling cords, your kitten will want to climb them. If you must have cords that hang, place some contact paper sticky side up in front of them, or some foil paper. Your kitten won’t want to walk on either surface.
One of the best ways of keeping your kitten safe is to provide it with plenty of toys to play with. Having something to chase and pounce on will distract it from chewing on your cords or furniture. Spend time playing with your kitten, teaching it the skills it needs to catch prey.
Have a variety of homemade toys available such as a box full of scrunched-up newspaper, a feather hanging from a table, an old ball of wool, or an old table tennis ball or shuttle cock from badminton. Then, when you see your kitten heading for somewhere you don’t want it playing in, you can distract it with a toy. Kittens are like young children in that they have short attention spans. Distract them and they forget about what they were going to do.
You don’t have to do too much to kitten-proof your house. Just use your commonsense about dangers, have plenty of toys available, and make sure you know where your kitten is at all times, just as you would with a small child.
