Bringing a Kitten Home in India: The First 30 Days
What actually happens in the first month with a kitten in an Indian flat. One room first, litter, food, vet timing, and the mistakes that cost money.
One room, not the whole flat. Litter tray away from the food. No cow's milk. Vet inside the first week. Everything else can wait.
Cats are roughly a third of Indian pet households and almost nothing written for them is written for India. The advice you find assumes a house with a garden, a temperate climate, and a pet shop that stocks six brands of litter. Here is the version for a flat in an Indian city.
Days 1 to 3: one room, and leave them alone
The instinct is to show the kitten its new home. Do the opposite.
Set up a single room, ideally one with a door that closes and no gaps behind heavy furniture. Put in a litter tray, water, food, a cardboard box on its side to hide in, and nothing else. Close the door and let them come out on their own schedule.
A kitten that has just left its mother, its siblings and everything it knows is not being shy. It is doing threat assessment, and that takes days rather than hours. A whole flat is too much information at once, and a frightened kitten will find a gap behind a cupboard you did not know existed.
Sit in the room and read something. Do not chase, do not pull them out of the box, do not hand them to visitors. The kitten will approach you within a day or two, and the relationship works better when it was their idea.
More on keeping a cat in an Indian flat
Litter that works here, the water problem, summer heat, balcony safety, and the one emergency every owner of a male cat should know about. Free, and there is no login.
Cat care in India →The litter tray, which is the whole game
Get this wrong in week one and you spend months undoing it.
Placement. As far from food and water as the room allows. Cats do not eliminate where they eat and will pick a corner of your flat instead if you make them choose.
Type. Uncovered, low sided, and big enough that the kitten can turn around. Covered trays are for the human's benefit and many cats dislike them. A kitten cannot climb into a high sided tray, so a baking tray or a shallow storage lid works better in the first weeks.
Litter. Clumping is easier to keep clean. Sand and soil work and cost almost nothing, which is why plenty of Indian households use them, and they track everywhere and do less for odour. Whatever you pick, do not change it abruptly once the kitten is used to it.
Scooping. Daily, without exception. Cats reject a dirty tray and the alternative they pick is your bed.
Kittens usually need no training at all. Put them in the tray after meals and after naps for the first few days and instinct handles the rest. If a kitten is not using it, the tray is almost always wrong rather than the kitten.
Food: what to give and what will make them ill
No cow's milk. This is the most common mistake in India and it causes diarrhoea. Adult cats and most kittens past weaning are lactose intolerant. Milk is not a treat, it is a stomach upset.
Kitten food, not adult food. Kittens need roughly double the calories per kilogram of an adult and more protein. Adult food does not have it.
Small meals, often. Three or four a day. Cats evolved eating many small prey animals rather than two large sittings.
Water matters more than you think. Cats have a weak thirst drive and often run mildly dehydrated on dry food alone. A wet meal a day helps, and in Indian summers it helps a lot. Our cat food calculator works out the daily amount by weight and life stage.
Never dog food. Cats need taurine, which dogs make for themselves, and long term dog food causes heart and eye damage.
Week 1: the vet visit
Book it in the first week even if the kitten looks perfectly well.
Ask for a weight, an age estimate, a check for ear mites and fleas, deworming, and a vaccination plan. Almost every kitten has worms passed from the mother, and street rescues often have ear mites, which are miserable and easy to treat.
The vaccination course usually starts at eight weeks and runs to sixteen. Our vaccination scheduler turns a date of birth into actual dates, and the deworming calculator covers the schedule that runs alongside it.
If you have another cat at home, keep them separated until the vet has checked the new one. Feline diseases spread easily and a fortnight of caution is cheaper than treating both. Cats are unambiguously lawful to keep here, which our page on legal pets in India cannot say for several animals people bring home.
Weeks 2 to 4: expanding, slowly
Once the kitten is confidently using the tray, eating well and coming to you, open the door.
Do it when you are home and can supervise. Kitten-proof first, and in an Indian flat that means three specific things:
Balconies. This is the one that kills cats in Indian cities. Cats fall from balconies, and a high floor is not safer because they land on their feet. Net the balcony or keep it closed. Do not rely on the kitten being sensible about heights, because they are not.
Buckets. Kittens drown in filled buckets, which are in most Indian bathrooms. Keep them covered or empty.
Wires and phenyl. Chewed cables and floor cleaner both land cats in emergency clinics. Phenyl in particular is toxic to them.
Month 1 onward: sterilisation
Book it. Cats reach sexual maturity earlier than people expect, often around five to six months, and an unplanned litter is far harder to place than anyone imagines.
Sterilisation also prevents pyometra in females, which is a life threatening emergency costing several times a planned spay. Our sterilisation cost estimator shows the range in your city and which providers do it free or subsidised.
What it costs
More than people budget for and less than they fear. Food and litter are the recurring lines, routine veterinary care is annual, and the first year carries the sterilisation and the kitten vaccination course. The cat cost calculator breaks it down by city and by how you feed.
The cost that actually breaks budgets is an emergency, and for cats the specific one to know about is urinary blockage in males, which is fatal within a day or two untreated. Our emergency symptom checker covers what to watch for.
Frequently asked questions
Can kittens drink cow's milk in India?
No. It causes diarrhoea, and dehydration from diarrhoea is dangerous in a small kitten. Use a kitten milk replacer if the kitten is still nursing age, and plain water alongside kitten food once weaned.
When should a kitten get its first vaccination?
Usually at eight weeks, with further doses at twelve and sixteen weeks, and rabies from twelve weeks. Immunity is not reliable until about two weeks after the final dose, so keep them away from unvaccinated cats until then.
How do I litter train a kitten?
Mostly you do not. Put the kitten in the tray after meals and naps for a few days and instinct does the work. If it is not using the tray, check the tray rather than the kitten: too high, too dirty, too close to food, or a litter it dislikes.
Do indoor cats in India need vaccination and deworming?
Yes to both. Cats get out, worm eggs arrive on shoes, and the common tapeworm comes in via fleas. Indoor life lowers exposure and does not remove it.
Is it safe to keep a cat on a high floor balcony?
Only if it is netted. Falls from balconies are a common cause of serious injury in Indian cities and cats do not reliably judge height. Net it or keep the balcony closed.
Should I adopt one kitten or two?
Two is often easier, not harder. They exercise and socialise each other, and a single kitten alone all day gets bored and destructive. Our shelter directory lists organisations across 18 Indian cities, and most have littermates.