The first week with a new kitten: one room, then the house

A whole house is overwhelming to a kitten that has just left everything it knew.

The single most useful thing you can do in the first week is to make its world small on purpose: one safe room to start, and the rest of the home earned as its confidence grows. Rushed, it hides for weeks; done gently, a kitten settles in days.

Set up one safe room

Choose a quiet room and put everything the kitten needs in it: food and water, a litter tray set well away from the food, a bed, a hiding spot, toys and a scratching post. Kitten-proof it as you would for a toddler that climbs — tuck away cords, block small gaps behind furniture, and remove houseplants that are toxic to pets. The room is a base, not a cage: it's where the kitten feels safe enough to be brave.

Let it come to you

Resist the urge to haul the kitten out from under the bed.

Sit on the floor, talk quietly, and let it approach in its own time — a wand toy is often what draws a shy kitten out, because play builds trust faster than handling does. Keep early handling gentle and short, and let the kitten decide when the lap is safe. Confidence you wait for lasts; confidence you force doesn't.

Roughly how the week goes

The shape is fairly predictable, and knowing it stops you worrying about the normal parts.

Day one is usually a kitten behind or under something, coming out at night to eat and use the tray while the house is quiet. That isn't unhappiness — it's exactly what a small animal should do in an unknown place, and finding the food gone in the morning is the reassuring sign you're looking for.

Days two and three bring the first appearances while you're in the room: watching from a distance, then a cautious circuit of the floor, then the first pounce on a wand toy. Play is almost always the thing that breaks the ice, and the kitten that wouldn't come near your hand will chase a feather past it.

By the end of the week most kittens are recognisably themselves in that one room — eating in front of you, sleeping in the open, climbing your leg — which is the signal to start opening the door to the rest of the house. If yours isn't there yet, give it longer rather than pushing; a fortnight for a timid kitten is entirely normal.

Litter from the start

Show the kitten the tray, keep it clean and easy to reach, and site it away from the food and water — cats dislike eating next to their toilet as much as we would. Most kittens take to a tray almost immediately because the instinct is strong. If accidents happen, they're usually about the tray's location or cleanliness rather than defiance; litter-tray problems nearly always trace back to something the setup is getting wrong.

Expanding territory

Once the kitten is confident and playful in its room, open the rest of the house gradually and under supervision, letting it explore a little at a time with the safe room always available to retreat to.

As the territory grows, add litter trays — the rule of thumb is one per cat plus one — and more than one place to eat and drink, so the kitten never has to cross the whole house for the basics.

Add height as you go, too, because for a cat a room is measured vertically as much as across the floor. A shelf, the top of a bookcase, a cat tree by a window: somewhere to get above the traffic is what turns a busy household from stressful into interesting, and it's the cheapest confidence you can buy a nervous kitten.

Resident pets and children

Introduce a resident cat or dog slowly, scent first and through a door before any face-to-face meeting, so the introduction builds curiosity rather than a standoff. Teach children to sit still and let the kitten come to them rather than chasing or grabbing, and make sure the kitten always has an escape route and a high perch to watch from. A kitten that can get away is a kitten that stays brave.

Feeding a kitten, and keeping the room genuinely safe

A kitten has a tiny stomach and a fast metabolism, so it eats little and often — several small meals a day of a food made for kittens, which is richer than adult food for a reason.

Keep it on whatever it was already eating for the first days and change gradually if you want to, because a new home and a new diet at once is what upsets a small stomach. Leave fresh water available, sited away from the food, and expect a kitten to graze rather than clear a bowl in one sitting.

Kitten-proofing goes further than it does for a puppy, because a kitten climbs, squeezes and investigates everything. Secure windows and any balcony — kittens misjudge heights and a fall is a real risk — and block the gaps behind and under furniture where a small cat can vanish or get stuck. Tuck away cords and hair ties, which are irresistible and dangerous to swallow, keep the toilet lid down, and get into the habit of checking before you close a washing machine, tumble dryer, drawer or reclining chair. A curious kitten will be in places you'd never expect.

Play, scratching, and the bond that comes from both

Play isn't optional for a kitten — it's how a hunter practises, burns energy and grows confident, and it's the fastest route to a bond with you.

Use wand toys, balls and things that move, and never your hands or feet: a kitten taught to pounce on fingers becomes a cat that bites them, and by the time it's grown it's no longer cute. A few short play sessions a day settle a kitten far more than they wind it up, and a well-played kitten sleeps, which is what a growing one needs a great deal of.

Give the kitten a scratching post from the first day and put it where the kitten actually is, not hidden in a corner. Scratching is a need, not a habit to break — it conditions the claws and marks territory — so the choice is only whether it happens on a post or on your sofa, and a post offered early usually wins. Pair all of this with gentle, unforced handling, a steady daily rhythm, and an early vet visit for a health check and a plan for vaccines and neutering, and the kitten's first week lays the groundwork for a confident, friendly adult cat.

Nights, and the small things worth watching

Two practical matters close out the week.

The first is sleep, or your lack of it. Kittens are most active at dawn and dusk, and a new one will often be tearing around at four in the morning and shouting at a closed door. The answer isn't to give in and open it, which teaches the shouting, but to move the energy earlier: a proper play session ending in a catch, then the last meal of the day, then quiet. A fed, hunted-out kitten sleeps, and the pattern usually settles within a couple of weeks.

The second is knowing what isn't normal. Hiding, a modest appetite and a bit of wariness are all expected. What isn't: a kitten that eats nothing for more than a day, persistent diarrhoea, repeated vomiting, sneezing with runny eyes, a swollen belly, or one that's lethargic rather than shy. Kittens are small and they go downhill quickly, so those are same-day vet calls rather than wait-and-see — and the early check-up is also when worms and ear mites, which a great many kittens arrive with, get dealt with before they become a problem.