The litter kitten I found is now 9 months old. Here are some things I wish I had known:

In early April 2023, a small black and white kitten with barely open eyes toddled out of a pile of twisted old gutters and fences to collect scrap metal. Upon closer inspection, they discovered four of the tuxedo kittens and their three ginger siblings, all safely hidden away by their mother.

For weeks I had been calling rescue services and trying to get them somewhere to no avail. Then one day, this little tuxedo litter kitten followed me out, looking really rough, and its eyes were sealed with a huge amount of hard discharge.

That was the day I became a cat owner and the day I took this little litter kitten to the vet. It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a cat, and there are so many things I wish I had known beforehand.

Naming your cat…

I told the vet that I would not name this kitten because he was not staying and that he should not put the name next to “kitten” or anything similar in his records. I insisted that the kitten was not mine and that I was only trying to help him. But he had a serious eye infection and wasn’t feeling well, so he was immediately moved to a box in my laundry room. At this point, “Cat” Waterworth had become “Gomes the Garbage Cat” and had lost everything.

Over the past nine months, I’ve learned a lot about receiving kittens as gifts through the “cat distribution system.” At least a few of those lessons will come in handy when you come face-to-face with your own anxiety demons. A child wearing fuzzy pajamas.

Raising a kitten isn’t cheap

When I was a kid on a farm in the 1980s, kittens were a dime a dozen and every barn had at least that many. They just needed some food and shelter, no focus on pet insurance, veterinary care, neutering, etc. Well, things are a lot different now.

A new kitten comes with a hefty price tag, from a series of vaccinations to keep the kitten safe and healthy to neutering to keep it from wandering around (or burdening you with more kittens). The first few months add up quickly. Gomez paid him $1,000 to get him up and running for the first six months. That’s probably a bit more than most in my area. Because I also had to deal with his upper respiratory and eye infections early on.

I am currently purchasing pet insurance for him. That’s because while cats are generally very resilient, early illnesses can all go the other way and result in a kitten costing much more than the national average of $960 to $2,486 per year. You should give him insurance coverage before dealing with any pre-existing conditions that can cause your premiums to go up dramatically.

Kittens will test your patience in the best and worst ways.

Every morning, every morning, the moment my feet touch the floor, a thunderous one comes running right in front of me, as if running ahead of me toward the kitchen. There, Gomez flipped onto her back onto the kitchen carpet and showed off her incredibly fluffy belly.

This is too vague, folks.

I always give him a little pat on the stomach, and then he runs in a figure 8 through the house, from the living room to the kitchen, to my office where I’m writing this, and to his special sitting area. And then it comes back to the living room. It took me a really long time to drink tea in the morning.

But this infinite energy has a dark side. For example, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve found him eating old receipts and tea bags from the bottom of my office trash can. And then there’s the way he harasses my house and the (pet-safe) plants in it. The office stands out. Every time you think you can’t have a kitten in your house, he finds a new way to try to injure himself. (Another reason why I need to provide him with the best pet insurance possible).

He also likes to pounce on older dogs who lurk around corners and look at him with a mixture of contempt, anxiety and eager amusement. I’ve already taken one of my dogs to the vet twice in the past few weeks for eye problems. I’m 90% sure the problem was caused by Gomez hitting her in the face with his little 10-pound paw. .

Since the dogs don’t have insurance, he desperately needs a job to pay these piling up vet bills. Is anyone hiring?

Despite everything, the experience was invaluable

Gomez came to me when she was about 6 weeks old, and having had baby dogs before, I knew I shouldn’t waste the little window I had. After all, he will soon become a rebellious teenager and will need to be reminded that good times have come before and they will come again. So now my phone is full of kitten pictures and my social media is full of clickbait kitten posts.

Having a litter kitten around has been a great experience, even though he sometimes causes pain and causes great loss to me through unintended consequences. I totally recommend it, and before you adopt a kitten, I hope you find a community that can remind you that this era of terror won’t last forever.