Is 5 weeks enough for new cats to settle before leaving with family?

While eight weeks is best, it's fine to have Cayde come to your home at seven weeks since you will be at home. That will be great in helping her adjust to her new home, and at seven weeks of age, she will be fully weaned from her mother.

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! This is the pet peeve of all veterinarians I know. In general, I recommend taking the advice of people who have advanced degrees in animal health and medicine. Breeders have no required certifications or education, and often no actual evidence for their recommendations. In this specific case, I will say that for PUPPIES, I prefer 8 weeks of age. However kittens seem to be able to wean, transition to kibbles, and potty train earlier than dogs. Six weeks with their first vaccine and deworming on board is a perfectly safe and reasonable time to get kittens into their new homes! Best wishes to you, the kittens, and their new families!

Personally I wouldn't put Channel through the flight for the sake of one week. If they don't get on one week is not going to make any real difference, and you would likely be at square one in the Summer. They will hopefully get on, but you will need to make sure that one or both is neutered to avoid kittens!

Hello, and congratulations on your new kitten! As long as your kitten is healthy and stable, I do not think it would be wrong to have a pet-sitter come in once every 24 hours to feed him, clean his litter box, and give him some cuddle time. You can try to have the pet-sitter rotate a few of his toys each day to keep him entertained. You can also consider a feline pheromone called Feliway, which helps to reduce stress in cats in new situations and environments. I hope this helps!

I’m sure they will be fine. They have been there before, and they have each other. There will be a short adjustment period when you get them back home but they will probably enjoy their vacation. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach to help you care for your kittens.

Kittens best stay with their mommy until they are 12 weeks old. Their mother will teach them what is good to eat and what not, how to hunt, and what to hunt safely, how to groom themselves properly, how to use a litter box, what animal is dangerous to them, how to carefully negotiate this world. The kittens will also need their mother still for psychological comfort, even suckling after being weaned is comfort when something was scary. Staying together with their siblings will teach kittens social skills, they get to play-hunt, play-fight, and have fun with other kittens, it keeps them fit, helps them to develop coordination and muscles. So if you can find homes for them before they are 12 weeks old, tell the new owners that they will get well socialised fit kittens that have no problems, rather than kittens who will cry because they miss mommy and the siblings, do have accidents, and show behavior such as cloth sucking, etc.

I'm glad you are doing your homework before bringing new fur babies into the situation. Most shelters will routinely deworm their pets and test for leukemia and FIV. So you definitely want to make sure these treatments/tests are run prior to adopting the new kittens. Its not unusual for new cats and kittens to break with upper respiratory infections within the first 2 weeks of being adopted. Herpes virus is very common in cats (some estimate 80% of cats carry the virus) and it comes out in the stress related to being in a shelter and being rehomed. Now, this is not going to happen to every cat/kitten but its not unusual. Therefore, your best chance to avoid this would be to get a cat/kitten that has been kept in a foster home. It will likely still have herpes but the environment should be less stressful, therefore less risk of the virus becoming active. Keep the new pet separated for 2 weeks. That way if it does have an outbreak, you will at least have it contained. You could also put your cats on 500mg of lysine twice daily to help booster their immune system. Kittens get 250mg twice daily. Please post again if you have any further questions!