Kitten or adult cat?
A kitten is adorable and exhausting; an adult arrives with its personality already formed. For many people, especially first-time owners, an adult is the better choice.
What a kitten involves
A two or three month old kitten is a whirlwind: it climbs the curtains, bites hands and feet, races about at four in the morning and investigates everything with its mouth, cables, thread and plants included. It needs several meals a day, vaccines, worming, neutering and a lot of supervision in a home that has to be thoroughly kitten-proofed. In return, you get the most entertaining stage. But its adult personality is not fully known yet: a very cuddly kitten can grow into an independent adult, and the other way round.
Why two kittens are better than one
Many shelters recommend adopting kittens in pairs, and it makes sense. They play with each other, tire each other out and learn to control their bite with an equal instead of with your ankles. A single kitten in a home where everyone works gets very bored and tends to play more roughly with people. If you want two cats, it is easier for them to get on if they arrive together as kittens, and better still if they are siblings, than to introduce an adult to another cat years later. Costs go up, but they do not double.
What an adult has going for it
With a cat of two, five or ten you know what you are getting: whether it is calm or active, whether it wants your lap or prefers to be near you without being touched, whether it is chatty, whether it gets on with other cats, dogs or children and whether it uses the litter tray properly. It usually arrives already neutered, vaccinated and tested. In Spanish shelters adults wait much longer than kittens, and black cats and older cats longer still. For a first cat in a flat, a calm, sociable adult is almost always the easiest option.
The age to leave mum is not negotiable
A kitten should not leave its mother and littermates before eight weeks, and twelve is ideal, which is what responsible breeders do. In those weeks it learns to use the litter tray, to control its bite and claws and to get along with other cats. The sensitive period for socialisation in cats comes early, roughly between two and seven or eight weeks: whatever it meets in that time, including people who handle it gently, shapes the adult it becomes. That is why it matters so much who raised it and how.
Getting to know an adult before you decide
In a shelter a cat can seem unfriendly simply because it is frightened in a pen. Ask the foster carer or the volunteers what it is like somewhere quiet, what it enjoys, whether it lets people pick it up and stroke it, how it copes with the carrier and with visitors, whether it has lived with other animals and why it is there. Visit more than once if you can. And be patient at home: a shy adult can take weeks to come out from under the bed and end up the clingiest cat on the street.
If you have time, patience and a prepared home, a kitten, and preferably two. If it is your first cat or you are out for long hours, a calm adult whose personality the shelter already knows is usually the safest bet.
Educational content from Michipedia. It does not replace the advice of a vet or a feline behaviour specialist. Every cat is an individual.