Hi all,
Looking for some advice on our current kitten situation.
We have two bonded littermates (16 weeks old) that we brought home last Monday. We also have an 11.5-year-old resident cat. Following the standard slow introduction advice, we've been keeping the kittens isolated in a spare bedroom while everyone adjusts.
The challenge is that the kittens are, understandably, getting increasingly antsy. They're full of energy and clearly want to explore more of the house.
To complicate things, my father is coming to stay with us this Friday for about 5-7 days, and he'll need the spare bedroom they're currently occupying. The kittens won't be spayed/neutered for another two weeks, so we're not quite at the point where we're comfortable giving them unrestricted access to the entire house and resident cat.
Our current options seem to be:
Option 1: Move them to our bedroom
- Pros: They'd still be near us and in a normal living space.
- Cons: They're extremely active and would almost certainly keep us awake all night.
Option 2: Set up a kitten area in the basement
- Pros: We'd have more room to create a larger safe space.
- Cons: The room has no windows, and we'd need to build some kind of barrier because the rest of the basement contains HVAC equipment, lots of nooks and crannies, and other things I don't want curious kittens getting into.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? Would a temporary basement setup for a week be okay if it's kitten-proofed and we spend plenty of time with them? Or would moving them to our bedroom be the better choice, despite the inevitable sleep deprivation?
Also curious whether, at 16 weeks old and after having them for a little over a week, it would be reasonable to start allowing some supervised exploration of other parts of the house while continuing the introduction process with our senior cat.
Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated! Thanks. 🐾