Bringing a Kitten Home

The first weeks with a kitten shape the years that follow. A calm guide for the new owner — and for the first photo that one day becomes a portrait.

Anyone bringing a kitten home — bought, or better still adopted from the shelter, where cats are always waiting — usually wants to do too much at once. The animal needs far less: one quiet room to begin with, a fixed place to hide, and the time to decide for herself when the rest of the house gets its turn. A kitten allowed to hide comes out sooner than a kitten carried everywhere.

The first weeks are also the window in which a cat learns what is ordinary: hands, vacuum cleaners, visitors, the carrier. Everything that makes a friendly introduction now is no battle later. Short and often works better than long and seldom — and that holds for play, lifting and stroking alike.

A cat does not get used to a house; she decides that it is hers.

And let the cat go outside, by preference, only once she is chipped, vaccinated and attached to you — your vet knows the right order and the right moment. Within those limits the rule is: the duller the first weeks, the better the years after.

Finally, the advice you may expect from an atelier: photograph. Not for us — for yourself, because nothing changes as fast as a kitten. Drop to your knees, find the window light and capture what will be gone a year from now. The photo you take today may, years on, be the portrait on the wall.

— the atelier