If you’re living alone, you may actually want to see if that cat can get a cat-friend at some point. Finding cats that get along with eachother is not easy, but they really do benefit from having another feline present.

Cats kinda show respect by keeping their distance and doing a very slow blink. If the cat isn’t fond of you instantly, or seems distant but is doing that, it’s kind of an “I won’t fuck with you if you don’t fuck with me” gesture. That’s a step in the right direction.

Or maybe you get a cat that’s super personable and cuddly day one. Cats have very strong personalities.

Cats love silvervine. Give 'em a stick to play with every so often and they’ll go nuts for it.

Train your cat to respond to its name while its kitten by calling their name and giving them treats when they respond (don’t give treats without pronouncing their name at first. they’ll learn in a month). Having cat trained to respond to name is mega useful, especially if they may go outside. (you can also train them to do some tricks for treats but that’s rather useless).

Also if they have long fur be prepared to brush them every 1-2 days (its annoying tbh).

grass and treehouses are a crapshoot, some of them don’t like it. Vets are important to get vaccinations (and neutering later), but indoor cats are rather unlikely to catch something, so yearly visits seem excessive when they are young and not behaving unusually (dark places hiding/meowing in new patterns).

Idk what age cat you are getting, but if it’s a kitten, younger cat you gotta play with it multiple times a day. If they get the zoomies it’s a good indication they need some play time with a feather pole.

Cats not getting enough stimulus will shred your furniture to shit (they still might but it’s way less likely).

Woof woof mfs

In no particular order, some things we do for our cat that you might find helpful:

I can vouch for gimcat malt soft paste anti hairball paste, our cat loves it as an after meal dessert and we haven’t found any hairballs in months. I tried tomlyn and hartz and she wouldn’t eat them.

If you plan on trimming claws and they don’t like it, try giving a treat after each clip and then transitioning to giving treats after you do each paw. I lay our cat on her back on top of my thighs and now she drools all over patiently waiting for me to finish so she can have treats - she used to hate it. I also make sure I have enough light to see through the claw to make sure I never get the fleshy part.

If you or anyone has cat allergies, try using Purina liveclear or an egg powder from chickens exposed to cats - I’m moderately allergic and the Purina dry food and foaming shampoo works wonders (though the foaming shampoo is a lot harder to use if your cat hates it). Our cat is somewhat used to the shampoo so I try to time applying it within a week of guests staying over.

Don’t forget to inspect the chin area for acne by parting the fur, you can treat it with chlorhexidine wipes or spray and a silicone massage tool (our cat likes that better than the wipes). We switched to a set of stainless food bowls and run them through the dishwasher after a single use to help prevent acne, after initial treatment we only need to apply chlorhexidine every couple weeks.

It’s fun to get a bunch of catnip and stuff to apply to toys, we have a jar of catnip, silvervine, and catnip spray which is easier to apply to toys that don’t have catnip pouches.

Don’t forget to spread out all the cat things, we have litter in our kitchen, food in the living room, water fountain in one bedroom, and several beds in every room and on the desk (gives her a place to hang out that’s not in front of the keyboard) and beds on bookshelves that she can jump onto.

If your vet determines that your cat doesn’t drink enough and you already have the fountains and wet food, bone broth is a nice treat that achieves hydration. We make our own using bones collected from cooking. We just pressure cook them in water after giving them a rinse to get rid of sauces and seasonings and freeze the result after skimming fat into ice cubes we can heat up and serve as dessert.

Clicker training has been loads of fun, we got her a scratching post and she wasn’t using it so after associating the click with getting a treat for a week we would put her paws onto the post and then click and treat. Eventually she would scratch it all the time for a treat so we transitioned to giving verbal cues and only rewarding if the cue was used, and we’ve expanded to other tricks like nose kisses, shaking paws, sitting on command, and standing up on command. It’s loads of fun and I think it’s a good mental exercise for her to be learning verbal commands. We’re working on fetch but she still doesn’t quite get that the toy needs to come all the way back.