Best age to adopt a kitten reddit

Many creatures need the care and support of their mothers in their earliest weeks, and cats are no exception. At most shelters and rescues, kittens can be adopted starting at 8 weeks.

Kittens for sale

Breeders will often wait until the kitten has been with their mother for at least 12 weeks, with many breeders waiting until 14 weeks.

That’s because there are many perks to sticking around their furry family members.

One of the biggest: socialization. “When kittens stay with their mother and other littermates, they learn how to play appropriately and how to communicate with other cats,” says Bruce Kornreich, Ph.D., DVM, DACVIM, director of Cornell Feline Health Center at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, New York.

In other words, this is how cats learn to be a cat.

For instance, mothers and littermates help teach their kittens the difference between a hard bite and a soft one. “If a kitten bites their littermates, a lot of times their littermates squeal or meow, and then they run off,” says Marci L.

Koski, Ph.D., a certified feline behavior and training consultant and