Ode to confinement

If you want your kitten to be safe at the times when you cannot keep an eye on it, and to limit the damage it can do to your house, and to build good habits in it, then the kitten has to be “imprisoned”.

The place of imprisonment can be either a large cage, roomy enough to hold the kitten’s bed, its bowl and its litter tray, or else the bathroom. For day-in, day-out use I prefer the bathroom, made safe for the kitten beforehand. A bathroom is ideal, because the floor is usually tiled: it can be washed easily if it has to be, and most kittens do not find it attractive as a lavatory.

Making the bathroom safe means clearing everything off every surface. Kittens will unfailingly get into the very places you thought “well, it will never get up there” about. Put away the soap, the shampoo, the razors, the toothbrushes, every ornament, the plants, the deodorants, the cups and the rest of it. Roll up the mats and rugs and take them out.

Make sure the cabinet doors shut tight. If they will not, fit a catch on the inside, or tie them with string, or put on a hook so that they cannot be nosed open — whatever it takes to make them secure.

Throw the shower curtain up over the rail it hangs from, so that the kitten cannot climb it. Shut the shower door. Shut the lavatory, or it will turn into a swimming pool by accident.

Take the lavatory paper away, because the kitten will shred it — that much is guaranteed. We used an upturned coffee tin to cover ours, which can hardly be called high fashion; the bed-and-bath departments of most stores sell far prettier covers for the purpose.

Now that the bathroom is safe for the kitten, it is time to make it comfortable. Stand the litter tray in a corner, as far from the doorway as it will go. The food and water bowls go well away from the tray — nobody likes eating beside a lavatory. The scratching post goes next to the kitten’s bed: cats often want to scratch the moment they wake, so having it to hand is a great convenience.

Leave the kitten some safe toys as well. String, wire and ribbon all have to go: a kitten can tear them up and swallow the pieces, and come to harm by it. Nor should it be left toys with buttons or plastic noses — anything, in short, with a part it could swallow. Kittens, particularly lonely ones, adore the sheepskin toys made for dogs. They are big enough to wrestle with and big enough to curl up and sleep against, and they take no looking after: the moment they are dirty, throw them in the wash.

A radio tuned to something pleasant can be company for a kitten. Stand it on the floor, or fasten it down to whatever it stands on, or it will certainly be knocked off. Use a portable set; if it is a mains one, be sure to spray the flex with an anti-chew preparation. Chewing flex is dangerous, and unhappily it is a kitten’s favourite amusement.