Hayley Miranda, a 28-year-old contemporary dance producer, had never considered herself a cat person. “In fact,” she says, “I’ve always hated cats. But then I went to Greece last summer with my boyfriend and while there we found this four-week-old kitten, stray and alone. It ended up staying with us in our Airbnb for a few days until we found a shelter.”
They returned to the UK, but Miranda had fallen in love with the kitten and wanted to adopt it. “A week before the kitten was due to come here, the woman at the shelter told us it was going to cost £1,000 to bring it here,” Miranda says. “We had to decide against it, which was really depressing, because we had fallen in love with this kitten.”
Tato and Tina
Her heart set on adopting, Miranda looked into rehoming kittens in the UK. “I found two at this shelter at Abbey Wood … we drove there, met these two cats, fell in love with them and then a week later brought them back home. It was such a whirlwind. That’s how we ended up with Tina and Tato. Everybody has these ideas that rescue animals are going to be terrible, but my two cats are the friendliest cats.”
Miranda Larbi, 32, is another kitten adopter. Larbi grew up with cats; her parents adopted several rescues over the years. So when a friend told her that her cat was expecting kittens, Larbi asked about adopting one. On New Year’s Eve, she picked up Lemi.
Miranda Larbi with Lemi
Bonding with an adopted or rescue kitten is crucial. Having had cats when she was younger, Larbi says that she has always felt how you treat a cat early on can affect its temperament. “My thing is that me and my cats need to reach an understanding: you’re here as my emotional sucker and I’m here to be your emotional sucker,” she says. “So I’m going to pick you up all the time … and in return I would like you to purr and be present in my life.”
Larbi and her partner make sure to shower Lemi with love and attention, “although, obviously, you have to leave it alone when it’s eating or cleaning itself”, she says. “But the more tactile and intimate you are with a kitten, the more relaxed and sociable it’s going to be.”
One way that you can get on your new kitten’s good side is by giving them healthy, nutritious food. This is especially important for rescue cats that may not have had access to their ideal diet at a shelter, says Clare Hemmings, scientific communications manager at Royal Canin. “The first thing to do when you bring them home is to not change their food straight away. Once you’ve let them settle in, then you can start giving them something that is really going to support their digestion,” Hemmings says. “With a brand like Royal Canin, we know that our food is high quality and very digestible. It’s specifically designed to support ideal, healthy growth once they’re in their new home. Often, if they’ve come from a poor start in life, they haven’t got very strong immunity or may have a fragile digestive tract, and all of that could make them feel bad. It will make them more susceptible to illnesses, but they may also have a stomach ache a lot of the time. They are unlikely to feel confident if they have to stay near their litter tray.”
Cats can often eat up to 20 small meals a day, so feeding your kitten little and often is preferable. “They can then monitor and regulate themselves,” Hemmings says. “They’re less likely to get overweight when they’re older and they don’t feel that stress of wondering where their next meal is coming from if they can access food at all times.”
It’s important not to disturb your kitten while it’s eating. You also don’t need to give your cats treats in order to get them on side, either. “Treats are a human thing,” Clare says. “You can actually just use a few kibbles from their daily diet as treats. You can enrich their environments by using things like activity feeders or by scatter feeding, where if you have dry food you can just scatter it so that cats can use their natural hunting instinct to find it. It’s about environmental enrichment, really, and food can play a part in that.”
For Miranda, food has been a key part of bonding with Tato and Tina. “We noticed a difference when we started feeding them the right food. They wanted to spend more time with us, so I think they appreciated us feeding them food that they liked.” Larbi agrees: “Knowing that the food we give Lemi is really nutritious ultimately means that we’re going to have a happy cat.”
“It’s crazy,” Miranda adds. “My entire kitchen has turned into this cat room. I even went to a pottery class and made their food bowls. I’m a total cat convert.”
Learn more about settling your new kitten into its new home at Royal Canin
