An essential part of kitten raising is teaching kittens what to expect from people. We want to make it all good things.

Because they’re new in town, and they don’t know anything.

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After several thousand years of people choosing the cutest, cuddliest kittens, finding them is easy. For most people, the problem is keeping them that way. Since no one sets out to turn their cute, cuddly kitten into a suspicious, nervous, shadow pet, how does it happen?

They aren’t treated cute and cuddly. Personally, I don’t know how anyone could bring home a bit of fluff with big eyes and then routinely treat them as though they were as huge and rugged as adolescent Labrador Retrievers… but people do. They tease them, play roughly with them, and try to challenge their sense of security.

We need to be especially restrained when we are trying to teach them the right and wrong things to do in our home. Kittens need gentle, persistent, and repeated actions modeled for them. Then they get it.

They aren’t treated like baby cats. I don’t know how people lose track of what kittens grow up to be, but while they may look like stuffed animals, (and maybe someone really wanted a puppy,) they are nonetheless cats in a tiny package. So they will have spells of dignity, independence, and attempted cunning, especially as they approach adolescence.

No matter how hilarious their attempts at intimidation, stalking, and pompousness might be, the kitten is molding their Future Cat State, and that part needs to be taken seriously. This doesn’t mean we can’t laugh at their antics, but it does mean we need to notice what they are trying to convey, and acknowledge them for it.

They aren’t treated like family. Many people find exasperation or disappointment overshadowing this most fleeting, and most delicate, time in their cat’s life. This often happens when they don’t cat-proof the living room, or fuss over litter box placement, or otherwise make room for the kitten in their homes and in their lives.

Sometimes I think it’s the absolutely awesome cuteness of kittens which creates these barriers to connection. People who are unused to animal interaction can find the concept of their existence as fellow creatures to be slippery and strange. By the time they no longer look like, and are treated as, stuffed toys, their sweet, open, hearts have been made shy.

While cats can be won over at any age, why make our task so much harder than it need be? Raising our kitten is a task that only lasts months, but then, lasts years.

It’s better for both of us if we do it right the first time.

If we didn’t have our cat as a kitten, we can still connect with that cutest part of them.

For more about kitten raising, see all my posts on training a kitten.

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