- Hi, I'm Karen Kalunian, and today we're talking about caring for your kitten.

(bright, upbeat music) (cat meows) So we're here at Pawswatch, the Community Cat Center, with Tina Conway.

And she does a lot of the adoptions here.

She's a full-time volunteer, as I like to say.

- Pretty much.

- And Tina, when someone takes home a new kitten there's always so many things that maybe they're not ready for, if they've never had a cat.

What are three tips that you might say that are really important?

Because they're brand new, they're little babies and they have so much to learn but yet the folks might not know what to do.

So what do you tell folks?

- I think the biggest thing is kittens are, kittens wanna play, they're ready to play.

So you gotta be sure to have some toys for them.

Scratchy things are really good.

Something to hide in is always nice, you know?

And they don't know you yet, so you wanna get to know them.

Kind of keep them in a small space, get them to know you, before they know your big house, you know?

And that way they'll know your voice, your touch, and they'll wanna come to you.

Kittens would require wet food and dry food as well.

It's really good for them to have the wet for digestion.

And a soft little bed to sleep in would be great.

- I know so many people always say, you know, oh the kittens claws, they might have children, or they might have fancy furniture, or they might have curtains.

I mean, kittens love to climb and they do have claws.

So if you were to show somebody, just briefly, - Yeah sure.

- how to do a little nail trim?

Because I think it's really fairly easy once you can get the kitten to the calm position.

- Sure.

- And it's something that's fairly easy to learn.

- It is.

Usually I would sit, but I can show you quick on this little guy, Parmesan here.

We have these little trimmers that are specific for cats.

And you just wanna squeeze the little pad, and the little claws come out.

Very important, you just wanna do the tip, not go all the way down to the pink area.

That's called the quick.

So just take a little bit of the tip off.

- Good job.

- Square it off.

- Oh, you got it.

- And he's good to go.

So you wanna get them all.

- It sometimes might be a two person job, but once they get comfortable with it, and it's really important to sort of start that right away so that they get used of the process.

- Exactly.

- And then none of your stuff will get messed up.

- Exactly.

- And then if folks are interested in adopting, you always have kittens and cats here?

- We do.

- And this one is adorable, but you can always check them out at their website and on Petfinder too.

(Tina giggles) Thank you.

- Thank you Parmesan.

- To watch more videos like this, visit RIPBS.org/animaltalk.

(cat meows)