It all started with two adorable kittens in PetSmart. Not for us; we aren’t ready for new kitties around the house. A friend of the head peep who never had cats before said her husband had fallen in love with the idea of two kittens… but she had no idea what to do for them. Our Kitten 101 posts are part of the process of gathering those thoughts together for our friend so that she has some ideas about things to do for her very first cats.

If you don’t have kittens, your house probably isn’t kitten-proof. Even if you have grown cats, there are likely things that you haven’t thought about in years that a mischievous kitten can get into. Kitten-proofing your house before your new kitten comes home is an important way to help keep him or her safe.

The first thing you want to do is get down on your stomach on the floor. This isn’t so that your family members can take funny photos of you. Instead, it’s so that you have a kitten’s eye view of things. Wow, that refrigerator suddenly looks big, doesn’t it? But the kitchen towel you have hanging from the refrigerator door handle sure looks like it might be tempting for a little one to leap at. What else should you look for while you are taking a kitten’s eye view of your house?

• Look for holes of all kinds. A cat can fit into nearly any space where her head will go, and a kitten’s head is really small.
  • Check to be sure that heat vents or registers are not loose. You don’t want a kitten in your ductwork!
  • Check for openings in the drywall around your plumbing, including under your sink cabinets. Our house was replumbed years ago and the drywall was never properly patched around where the pipe for one toilet passes through the wall. That’s the kind of thing that you’re accustomed to looking at and don’t pay attention to any more that can become a real hazard!
  • Check inside your cabinets to be sure that the interior is solid all the way to the top. A hole near the top leading to a void space where the corner of cabinets is otherwise inaccessible isn’t unusual in apartments, and one of the cats who came before us, Radcliffe, vanished into one of those as an adult cat right after we had moved into a new place. For several hours, we thought he had escaped outside. It’s better to be sure those spaces are kept off limits.
  • If your kitchen cabinets are set up so they don’t meet at 90 degrees (if you have a corner sink, for example), look underneath where the face frame for the cabinet overhangs the toe kick. There can be a triangular hole underneath if the cabinet edges are not mitered. Another of the cats who came before us, Talia, climbed into one of those holes as a tiny kitten and ended up behind the adjacent access panel at the bottom of a dishwasher. There was still duct tape covering that hole when the head peep moved out of that house years later, but no more kittens ended up under the dishwasher!
• Living Room Furniture
  • If you have a recliner, take a look at how much clearance there is under there, and realize that it’s nowhere for a cat of any size to be when you recline or sit it up. Always make sure you know where your kitty is before operating the mechanism in a recliner.
  • What does the bottom of your sofa look like? Most of them have a gauzy-looking liner that is easy for cat claws to tear through, giving them access to the area between the coils on the underside of the sofa. Kittens can be injured if caught when the springs compress. It’s easy to replace the lining on the bottom of the sofa with more durable fabric. Any cheap fabric that seems durable will do, and all you have to do is turn over the sofa and use a staple gun to attach it around the sofa frame. Since it’s on the bottom of the sofa, no one but you knows about the Barney the dinosaur print fabric on the bottom of your sofa. Well, no one but you and your cat.
• Your Bed
  • The box spring of your bed usually has a fabric lining underside similar to your sofa, with the same hazards. You can solve it the same way by replacing the fabric. At our house, we have boards under the box spring that were previously used with a platform bed. Anything that keeps kitty out of the underside of the box spring.
  • If you have a waterbed frame with drawers, you may think you’re safe from having to worry about the underside of the bed, but the head peep would like you to know from experience that motivated cats can learn to open drawers. And getting a cat out from behind an under-bed drawer is really hard. You might consider looking at child latches for your under-bed drawers if this becomes an issue.
• Breakables
  • If you have lived in a cat-free home, you may have gotten used to keeping breakable knickknacks on shelves and tables. Kittens are the awkward teenager version of cats, and they’re more likely to knock down objects by accident, so you may want to move them to inaccessible locations. We have just a few cat-inaccessible locations, though Newton dreams of getting up there to them.
  • For breakable art that you want to keep out in locations where kittens are likely to roam, consider using something like museum putty, designed to hold art objects during earthquakes.
• Houseplants
  • You may not realize how many of the houseplants you have around your house may be dangerous to cats. Common plants you may bring into the house seasonally like mistletoe or Easter lily, or everyday plants like rhododendrons are all toxic.
  • Refer to the ASPCA Animal Poison Control list for a complete listing of plants toxic to cats.
•  General
  • Make sure that string-like materials are locked safely out of a kitten’s reach. Although images of kittens and yarn are iconic, it can be deadly if swallowed, so make sure that yarn, string, needles and thread, fishing line, and any other string-like materials are only played with under supervision.
  • Make sure the fireplace screen has no gaps.
  • Check window screens to be sure they are secure. Excited kittens can leap at screens when they see something outside, so make sure they can’t be pushed out.  If you don’t have screens on windows, be sure the windows aren’t opened. Kittens are fast on four little legs, and you can’t necessarily get to the open window faster than they can.
  • Make sure the door to your utility rooms shuts, or be sure that you can securely close your washer and dryer. Warm places like those are attractive to cats, but they can be trapped inside.
  • If possible, restrict access from the garage. If your car leaks antifreeze, it takes as little as a teaspoon to poison a cat.

It may sound like a lot of work, but once you have done the work of kitten-proofing your house and made it a kitten-safe environment, maintaining it is easy.

If you enjoyed this post, don’t miss Kitten 101: Gear for your New Kitten.

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