The safety sweep, done at cat height

Do this before the carrier comes through the door, and do it lying on the floor. Standing up, you cannot see the gap behind the fridge, the cable looping under the desk, or the two inches of open space beneath a dresser. A cat — especially a kitten — sees nothing else.

Cords and cables. Anything hanging loose and swinging is a toy. Route power cords, charging cables and blind pulls behind furniture, tape them flat to the baseboard, or run them through a clip channel. Loose loops at cat height are the ones to deal with first.

String, thread and small objects. This is the one worth being strict about. A cat's tongue is covered in backward-facing barbs, which is excellent for grooming and terrible for getting something back out of its mouth. Once thread, ribbon, hair ties or dental floss go in, the mechanics push them backward, not forward. Swallowed string can bunch the intestine and turn into emergency surgery. Collect the sewing basket, the earring dish, the elastics on the counter. Small toys with parts a cat can detach and swallow go away in a drawer when you are not in the room.

Gaps and vanishing spots. Cats squeeze into tight spaces partly out of curiosity and partly because tight spaces feel safe — which is exactly why a frightened new cat will pick the worst one available. Block the gap behind and beneath the refrigerator and washing machine, close closet doors, keep drawers shut, check inside the dryer every single time before you run it, and close the toilet lid. If a new cat wedges itself somewhere unreachable, you will not coax it out, and reaching in to grab a cat that does not trust you yet is how people end up at a walk-in clinic.

Plants, mothballs and medication. A long list of common houseplants is toxic to cats — lilies are the notorious one and are genuinely dangerous — so look up anything green in your house against a current veterinary toxic plant list before the cat arrives. Mothballs live in exactly the closets cats want to explore and are worth retiring entirely. Pills go in a closed drawer, not on a nightstand.

Windows and screens. Falls from windows and balconies are a real and seasonal source of injury. Make sure every screen is secure and cannot pop out under a cat's weight, keep balcony doors closed unless the space is properly enclosed, and check screens before the first warm week rather than after.

One quiet room, set up properly

A whole house is not a gift to a newly arrived cat; it is an unmapped territory with no safe corner in it. Start with a single room — a spare bedroom, a home office, anywhere with a door and low traffic — and let the cat build a small, defensible base before it takes on the rest.

Keep the litter box away from food and water. This is the placement rule that matters most and the one small rooms break. Cats will not happily eliminate next to where they eat. If the room is tight, separate them vertically instead: put the food and water bowls up on a desk or a low shelf the cat can comfortably reach, and leave the box on the floor at the other end. For a very young kitten, keep the food low enough that it can actually get to it without a leap.

Give it more hiding places than feels necessary. Two or three open cardboard boxes on their sides, tucked against walls and in corners, plus a fabric tunnel if you have one. This sounds counterproductive — surely you want the cat out where you can see it — but a cat with reliable hiding options relaxes faster than a cat with none, because it never has to make the calculation about whether it can escape. Cats also feel safer moving along walls than across open floor, so keep a route around the edge of the room clear.

Skip the cage. Multi-level cat cages with the box on one level and the bed on another break the food-and-box separation rule by design, and they cannot satisfy a cat's need to move and patrol. A carrier is for transport. Once you are home, if you use one at all, leave the door open so it works as another hiding spot.

Turn the lights down. Overhead lighting in an unfamiliar room is one more thing to be tense about. A lamp or a small night light is plenty.

Litter choice matters more than usual right now. A new cat is already deciding whether this box is acceptable, and a heavily perfumed litter or a dusty one is a bad first impression to make during the exact week you are trying to establish the habit. Unscented and low-dust is the safe default — and if the shelter or breeder used a particular texture, matching it for the first week and changing later is worth the extra bag. There is more on the labeling in low-dust versus dust-free litter, and on the day-to-day routine in our complete guide to using tofu cat litter.

The passive protocol: why doing less works faster

Do not stare. A direct, sustained look into a cat's eyes is not a friendly greeting; between cats it is what happens immediately before a fight. Looking away, blinking slowly, or simply carrying on with something else communicates that you are not a threat. For the first few days, go into the room and behave as though the cat is not there — refill, scoop, tidy, leave. Not seeing the cat is the message.

Do not pick the cat up. Being lifted means being caught. To a cat that has not decided about you, that is a total and sudden loss of control, and it is the single fastest way to convert cautious neutrality into active avoidance. Handling is something you earn in week three, not something you do on day one.

Do not force introductions. When friends come over, the rule is the same and it is worth saying out loud before they arrive: ignore the cat completely. No calling it over, no crouching down going here kitty, and absolutely no pulling it out from under the bed to be admired. A cat that has a bad experience with a stranger generalizes it to strangers, and you will be living with that for years.

Make yourself predict good things. This is the part that actually builds the relationship. Every time you enter, something good happens — fresh food, a better-than-usual treat left on the floor, a clean box. Do that consistently and the cat starts associating your arrival with reward rather than uncertainty. It is simple conditioning and it works on a timescale of days.

Greet like a cat. Once the cat is voluntarily approaching you, get low — sitting or crouching, not bending over from standing. Looming over an animal a fraction of your size is pressure even with the friendliest intentions. Extend one finger at roughly nose height and let the cat close the last distance and touch it, which is the human version of the nose-to-nose greeting cats use with each other.

Learn the stop signals. When you do start petting, begin at the cheeks and under the chin, which most cats accept before they accept anything else, and keep the first sessions extremely short. Stop the moment you see a hard tail thump or lash, skin twitching along the back, ears rotating back, or the cat turning toward your hand. Over-petting is a genuine cause of sudden swipes, and the cat almost always warns you first. Stopping early, while everything is still going well, is what makes the cat come back.

When to open the door

The cat is ready for the rest of the house when it is doing all of the ordinary things in the small room without you having to leave first: eating while you are present, using the box, sleeping somewhere visible rather than pressed into a corner, and coming toward you when you come in. If it is still under the bed every time the door opens, it is not ready, and opening the house up early usually means it simply finds a better hiding place and you lose a week.

Two exceptions worth planning for. A young kitten still developing bladder control will not travel across a house to reach a box in time — if a kitten is allowed into the bedroom, put a second box in or near that room, because convenience genuinely determines whether it makes it. And in a household that already has a cat, opening the door is a separate project entirely: scent swapping and feeding on either side of a closed door come first, and a face-to-face introduction comes last. Rushing that is the most common origin of long-running tension between cats, along with the litter box problems that follow. Our guide to multi-cat households covers the resource setup, and is your cat secretly stressed covers the warning signs.

One last thing. If a cat that has settled in suddenly starts eliminating outside the box, treat it as information rather than misbehavior — and rule out medical causes first. Cats do not do this out of spite, and urinary problems look identical to litter box aversion from the outside. Box size and setup is the next thing to check after your vet has cleared the medical side.