socialization of a kitten
People often want a kitten as young as possible, because they are still able to raise them properly, for example. Nothing is further from the truth. The younger you separate a kitten from its mother the more behavioral problems are on the horizon and the more unhappy a cat will be in his or her adult life.
In the wild, male kittens stay on average 7 months with their mother in the cat colony, before they get to stand on their own feet. Female kittens continue their lives in the same colony as their mother’s. From this, you can gather that a kitten actually needs its mother 7 months long. The law, however, stipulates that a kitten should remain with their mother for a minimum of 7 weeks.
The first socialization period is completed after 7 weeks. Then the second period of socialization begins. This one is just as important. At this age, the kitten is, more than the rest of his life, open to watch and learn. This means that kittens learn what their mother and littermates do and sometimes already imitate this after one time. This way, they learn to direct their natural behavior in the right direction. They also learn from their mother and littermates what’s allowed and what’s not, whereby they learn what the boundaries are.
If you take kittens away from their mother before those 12 to 13 weeks, we often see that they develop aggression, unclean behavior, start spraying, hang on the wallpaper and on the couch with their nails, etc. This is not so strange. A kitten simply hasn’t learned well how to keep itself standing in different situations, allowing the cats to fall back into their natural behavior after about 1.5 to 2 years.
It is also important that, especially kittens who will grow up as indoor cats, don’t come to live alone in a house. A cat lives in the wild in a colony and is committed to congeners.
Someone who is considering purchasing a kitten, is best to choose a cat that has at least spent 12 weeks with the mother. Additionally, for the health of the animal, it is important that it’s vaccinated twice before it is separated from the mother. There must be one week waiting period between the last vaccination and the removal, to avoid vaccination reactions. A kitten gets roundworms with the breast milk. Therefore, a kitten needs to be dewormed in the 4th, 6th, 8th, 12th, 16th, 32nd week and subsequently every three months.